ProvidenceinAmerica 



OR 



The Problems of Self -Gov- 
ernment 



BY 



CLARENCE A. VINCENT 

Minister First Congregational Church, 
Sandusky, Ohio. 



Copyrighted, 



THE ALVORD-PETERS COMPANY, 
PUBLISHERS. 



I-* \nrj 



^ 



17822 



PRESS OF 

THE ALVORD-PETERS COMPANY, 

NEW YORK, SANDUSKY, OHIO. 




IWOuOrltoiicGtiVtD. 



2nd COPV. 










'Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all 
the inhabitants thereof." 



CONTENTS, 

I. THE SCRIPTURES AND NATIONAL I^IFE 7 

II. PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA'S DISCOVERY 27 

III. PROVIDENCE IN ITS PHYSICAL 

FEATURES .... 40 

IV. PROVIDENCE IN ITS SETTLEMENT . 58 
V. PROVIDENCE IN ITS DEVELOPMENT 73 

VI. providence: in ITS CRITICAL PERIODS 87 

vii. providence in its leaders . t05 

viii. providence in its present perils ii8 

ix. what does god expect of america? i38 

x. the church and america's future 161 

xi. the home and america's future i9i 

xii. america's future assured 204 

xiii. english-speaking nations and the 

world's future . . . 226 



TO THE 

GROWING NUMBER IN THE CHURCH 
OF CHRIST 

WHO APPRECIATE THE PRINCIPLES AND 

PROBIvEMS OF AMERICA AND THE RESPONSIBIEITY 

AND PRIVII.EGE OF THE CHURCH 13 

THIS VOI.UME DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE. 

The synon^^m for America's past is achievement; 
for its present, responsibility; for its future, oppor- 
tunity. Its brief life has been one of great strug- 
gles at great odds — a David fighting a Goliath — but 
of marvelous victories. The present finds it faced 
by many and satanic enemies, but courageous, de- 
termined, and hopeful — a Gideon and his three hun- 
dred joining battle with the horde of Midianites. 
The future beckons it on to the completion of those 
vast undertakings which it has set itself to accom- 
plish. We see written upon its history the name of 
the Lord, and we hear the Spirit speaking to it now, 
as to the church in Philadelphia, ' ' I know thy 
works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, 
and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little 
strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not de- 
nied my name." 

The writer of this book has been impressed in all 
his study of American history that the hand of God 
can be as plainly seen in it as in the records of the 
children of Israel, and that upon this nation God 
has laid a peculiar responsibility. It has seemed 
to him that at this time, when so many problems 
demand solution and so many battles are thrusting 
themselves upon us, the attention of the Lord's 
chosen and heroic band should be directed to the 
marked evidences and incidents of God's provi- 
dence, and, in the light of this, to our peculiar mis- 
sion and the brightness of our hope. He sends it 
forth, then, believing that the Spirit has led to its 
preparation and will use it in the furtherance of 
the kingdom. 



O God, our heip in ages past, 

Our hope for years to come, 
Our shelter from the stormy blast, 

And our eternal home. 

Under the shadow of thy throne 

Thy saints have dwelt secure; 
Sufficient is thine arm alone, 

And our defense is sure. 

Before the hills in order stood. 

Or earth received her fame. 
From everlasting thou art God, 

To endless years the same. 

O God, our help in ages past. 

Our hope for 3'ears to come ! 
Be thou our guard while troubles last, 

Ar.d our eternal home. 

— Isaac Wails. 



PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 



I. 

THK SCRIPTURES AND NATIONAL LIFE. 

At our mother's knee we first learned of 
the children of Israel. With thrilling in- 
terest we followed them in their wanderings, 
shocked at their disobedience and listening 
with hushed hearts to the record of God's 
care. It seemed to us then that God walked 
and talked with them as a father walks with 
his children across the fields, and. while 
guiding their feet, talks of his plans for 
their lives. 

As age comes and we read the history 
with more mature minds, the impression, 
while it becomes less gross, deepens, as we 
see the tenderness of that care and the 
greatness and wideness of those purposes 
which he w^as working out through them. 

The promise of God's care over the indi- 
vidual life of each child of his is one of the 
rich heritages of the soul. The trust of 
David, ''The Lord is my shepherd, I shall 
not want," and the wader sweep of Paul's 
confidence, ' ' I know whom I have believed, 
and am persuaded that he is able to keep 



o PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA; 

that which I have committed unto him 
against that day," are examples of the as- 
surance that speaks forth from almost every 
page of the Scriptures. Through all the 
dark ages since Paul's day there have been 
choice souls who have heard these voices of 
cheer. Poets have sung of this care, 
martyrs in the hour of persecution and death 
have found strength in it, and the saints of 
all climes have amidst the turbulence of life 
walked in perfect peace because of it. 
lyife without this confidence would be night 
with the stars gone. None the less sure 
is the teaching of the Scriptures upon God's 
care over nations. This we need to have 
clearly in mind before we study the history 
of our own nation. 

1 . The nature and character of God in- 
sure his care. He is omniscient, omni- 
present, omnipotent, immutable, just, holy,, 
good, faithful, and " is love." He created 
the world and placed man upon it. He has 
sent his Sen to redeem it. Accepting the 
Bible outline of God's nature and character, 
we must accept the necessary ergo that he 
cares with perfect care for those persons and 
nations that do his will. 

2. The purpose of God. He has found- 



THE SCRIPTURES AND NATIONAL EIFE. 9 

ed a kingdom upon the earth. This kingdom 
is to be world-wide — is to control the world' s 
life. A kingdom means loyal subjects, but 
it means more— loyal subjects united in one 
effort and with a single aim. Thus we have 
nations whose purpose is the carrying out 
of God's purpose — the bringing of the uni- 
versal kingdom. He will not leave such a 
company to the destruction of wicked men, 
nor fail in the carrying out of his plans by 
neglecting those upon whom the consum- 
mation rests. We must not in our doubt 
charge upon the Lord what would be a libel 
upon finite character and wisdom. It is the 
iUvStability of children and of weak-minded 
or immoral men that permits their plans to 
fail from neglect. 

3. The promises of the Scriptures. The 
author of the thirty-third Psalm has a wide 
horizon. He calls upon the righteous to re- 
joice in the Lord. He created the heavens 
and the earth. He governs the world. All 
kings and nations, whether they obey him 
or not, are instruments in his hand. He 
gives special knowledge, protection, help 
and joy to his own chosen people. There- 
fore should they praise him. In this song 
he declares a great truth, whose application 



lO PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA, 

is as wide as the world, ' ' Blessed is the 
nation whose God is the lyord; and the peo- 
ple whom he hath chosen for his own in- 
heritance. ' ' And in another psalm he sings, 
"Happy is that people whose God is the 
Lord." 

The Lord said to Moses, speaking of the 
children of Israel, ' ' Oh that there were 
such an heart in them, that they would fear 
me, and keep all my commandments al- 
ways, that it might be well with them, and 
with their children forever ! " ^ Before this 
the Lord had promised, ** Now, therefore, if 
ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my 
covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treas- 
ure to me from among all peoples: for all the 
earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a 
kingdom of priests, and an holy nation,"^ 

Any one with a concordance can multiply 
these promises. They all teach in general 
that God punishes those nations that com- 
mit sin, and b' esses those that do his will. 
National disaster is certain outside of God., 
National success is assured in him. 

4. Special incidents. The promises are 
strengthened by recorded incidents of pun- 
ishment and favor. Israel's history is a 

1 Deut. V :C9. 2 Exodus XIX :5-6. 



THE SCRIPTURES AND NATIONAI^ LIFE. 1 1 

continual illustration that sin is a nation's 
ruin and righteousness its life. The greater 
part of the Old Testament Scriptures might 
be appended in witness of this assertion. The 
Red Sea, with its destruction to Pharaoh's 
army and its salvation to IMoses' escap- 
ing slaves, the falling walls of Jericho, the 
forty years of wandering because of doubt, 
the victory of Gideon's band, and other al- 
most countless illustrations, are known to 
every Sunday-school scholar. This special 
providence includes the supply of temporal 
necessities, victory over enemies, escape 
from mean conditions and the opening of 
opportunities. The power of God is 
pledged to it, even to the performance of 
that which the world calls miraculous. 

5. The leaders. God works through 
personality. Men look for armies ; God 
searches fcr a man. The wisdom and pur- 
pose of Jehovah are seen in nothing more 
plainly than in the leaders raised up and 
used. The Bible bristles with telling proofs 
of this. The Lord wants this enslaved race 
in Egypt to be a free people in Canaan. 
How shall it be accomplished? He calls 
Moses to the performance of the task. The 
names of .^^braham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, 



12 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA; 

Joshua, David, Daniel, and others stand for 
men divinely raised up, national movements 
begun and carried on by the will of God, and 
great results accomplished. The Scriptures 
teach clearly that God raises up men for 
leaders and fits them for their tasks, that he 
calls them to the place of responsibility, and 
that he furnishes to the faithful the wisdom 
and power needed for success. 

6. Providence is clearly seen in the rev- 
elations given the nations. The Bible has 
the awe-inspiring scene of the giving of 
the law at Mt. Sinai. Providence dis- 
closes itself in the way it was given. 
Amid thunders and lightnings and thick 
clouds, with the voice of trumpet, the 
mountains quaking and smoking, the Lord 
calls Moses to the top of the mountain and 
there reveals to him his will, the command- 
ments of the Lord. The commandments 
themselves give proof of their authorship. 
They summon the world to a new life. 
They call it from the wilderness of idolatry 
and selfishness up to the heights of an om- 
nipotent God and a world-wide brotherhood 
in God. A world that has never been able 
to realize in its life these requirements could 
never have given us theoe ideals. None but 



The scriptures and nationai, life. 13 

God can draw the outline of God. 

The New Testament adds its revelation. 
It declares, as we have said, that Christ has 
founded a universal, spiritual kingdom. 
He is its head. It is to control in time the 
world's life. Its two laws are the first and 
second commandments, as interpreted and 
illustrated by Christ. Kach nation, then, 
is to be conducted in harmony with these 
laws. This requires the putting away of 
vice and lawlessness. It means a perfect 
industrial, intellectual, social, political, 
moral, and religious life. The best nation 
does not appreciate even yet the absolute 
perfection of this kingdom. Its outline was 
not drawn by human skill. A perfect king- 
dom means a perfect founder. A perfect 
founder is God. 

These revelations came in the fullness of 
time. The law was given at the earliest 
moment when Israel would receive it. 
Christ came, and his kingdom was set up in 
the fullness of time. So in all the coun- 
tries shall God appear, and some new appli- 
cation of his truth be made known, as men 
and nations are ready to respond. A king 
once gave to the officer in command of a 
warship a number of sealed letters. One 



14 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

was to be opened when he had reached a 
certain place. This told him where to sail. 
There another one could be opened. So 
point by point the journey was made and 
the work of the king revealed and carried 
on. Thus God deals with nations. One 
by one the seals that contain his will for 
them are broken, and the breaking of each 
is conditioned on their fidelity to instruc- 
tions given before. 

Why did God thus lead and bless Israel ? 
For Israel's sake. He wanted to make 
them strong, prosperous, happy, and right- 
eous. The L/Ord delights in a holy people. 
He would make every nation good. He 
saw in Israel special elements of hope. He 
revealed himself to them because he would 
give them unusual opportunities. " And 
Moses went up unto God, and the Lord 
called unto him out of the mountain, say- 
ing. Thus shalt thou say to the house of 
Jacob, and tell the children of Israel; Ye 
have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, 
and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and 
brought you unto myself. Now therefore, 
if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep 
my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar 
treasure unto me from among all peoples: 



THE SCRIPTURES AND NATIONAL EIFE. 1 5 

for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto 
me ?, kingdom of priests, and an holy na- 
tion. These are the words which thou 
shalt speak unto the children of Israel."^ 

" Oh that there were such an heart in 
them, that they would fear me, and keep 
all my commandments always, that it might 
be well with them, and with their children 
forever ! ' ' 

' ' Ye shall walk in all the way which 
the lyord your God hath commanded 
you, that ye may live, and that it may be 
well with you, and that ye may prolong 
your days in the land which ye shall pos- 
sess. ' ' ^ 

" Hear, O Israel: thel^ordour God is one 
lyord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, 
and with all thy might. And these words, 
which I command thee this day, shall be 
upon thine heart: and thou shalt teach them 
diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk 
of them when thou sittest in thine house, 
and when thou walkest by the way, and 
when thou liest down, and when thou i is- 
est up. And thou shalt bind them for a 
sign upon thine hand, and they shall be for 

1 Exodus XIX :3. 2 Deut. V:29-33. 



l6 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

frontlets between thine eyes. And thou 
shalt write them upon the door posts of thy 
house, and upon thy gates. And it shall 
be, when the Lord thy God shall bring thee 
into the land which he sware unto thy 
fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, 
to give thee; great and goodly cities, which 
thou buildedst not, and houses full of all 
good things, which thou filledst not, and 
cisterns hewn out, which thou hewedst 
not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou 
plantedst not, and thou shalt eat and be 
full; then beware lest thou forget the Lord, 
which brought thee forth out of the land of 
Egypt, out of the house of bondage. ' ' ^ 

God aimed to make Israel a nation whose 
God is the Lord. Idolatry is death to na- 
tional life. It makes men superstitious. It 
breeds ignorance. It feeds vice. It re- 
moves the sense of responsibility. It is to 
all moral, social, educational, political, and 
religious life what leprosy is to physical 
life. The worship of the true God is na- 
tional life. It gives a conscience. It fur- 
nishes lofty ideals. It is the source of cour- 
age. It stimulates intelligence. It gives a 
mission. All this God would do for Israel. 

iDeut. VI:4-12. 



THE SCRIPTURES AND NATlONAIv IvlFK. l^ 

God had also the whole world in view. He 
was preparing Israel for a broader work 
than its own salvation and perfection. He 
wished to reveal himself in perfect love and 
mercy to the world. His purpose included 
the soul's redemption and the final perfec- 
tion of society. Israel's life was not to be 
a selfish one. In national as in individual 
existence, life is found by losing life for 
noble ends. God opens the Red Sea and 
gives succor and wisdom for the sake of the 
world. Every new grace added to the 
world's life was in God's thought when he 
blessed the Jewish people. 

God had Christ's coming and work in 
mind. He w^ould fit this people for that 
supreme event and task. He blessed them, 
that later on the angels might sing the news 
of glad tidings, that the afflicted might have 
a physician, that the cross should come to 
the world's rescue and the tomb be robbed 
of its great terror. Israel was guided that 
Christ in becoming King of the Jews might 
also become King of the world. God gives 
the sunlight not only that the earth may be 
beautiful and fruitful, but also that man may 
be fed and delighted. So he shone upon 
Israel, not only for her life and beauty, but 



1 8 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

that through her the world should live and 
be clothed with the beauty of holiness. 

Nations, if they would be the subjects of 
God's special care, must meet certain con- 
ditions. So teach the Scriptures. They 
must be loyal to God. 

"Behold, I set before you this day a 
blessing and a curse; the blessing, if ye 
shall hearken unto the commandments of 
the lyord your God, which I command you 
this day: and the curse, if ye shall not 
hearken unto the commandments of the 
lyord your God, but turn aside out of the 
way which I command you this day, to go 
after other gods, which ye have not known. 
And it shall come to pass, when the lyord 
thy God shall bring thee into the land 
whither thou goest to possess it, that thou 
shalt set the blessing upon mount Gerizim, 
and the curse upon mount Ebal. Are they 
not beyond Jordan, behind the way of the 
going down of the sun, in the land of the 
Canaanites which dwell in the Arabah, over 
against Gilgal, beside the oaks of Moreh ? 
For ye are to pass over Jordan to go in to 
possess the land which the Lord your God 
giveth you, and ye shall possess it, and 
dwell therein. And ye shall observe to da 



THE SCRIPTURES AND NATION AI, IJFE. I9 

all the statutes and the judgments which 
I set before you this day."^ 

A country's outlook is usually estimated 
by its mines, the number of its acres, its 
exports and imports, by the number and ef- 
ficiency of its schools and by its present 
moral and social conditions. These are, be- 
yond measure, determining forces. Still 
they are secondary. In loyalty to God rests 
its future. This was the condition implied 
when God covenanted with Abraham. It 
was clearly specified when the law was 
given. Israel's history from its beginning 
until now is a continued illustration of it. 
Genesis gives us the record of four oppor- 
tunities given the race, and the sad failure 
at each time through its disobedience. The 
first trial was made in Eden with Adam, and 
he disobeyed. The second was with Seth. 
This ended with the flood. Then, with 
Noah at the head, the Lord gives another 
opportunity. The confusion of tongues and 
the scattering of the people close this chap- 
ter. Finally Abram is called out and sep- 
arated unto the Lord as a peculiar treasure. 
For a time his posterity are loyal to God 
and are successful, then they become self- 

iDeut. XI:26-32. 



20 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

reliant and sink into the hopeless slavery of 
Egypt. Disloyalty is rebellion. Rebellion 
against God is ruin. This rebellion may be 
wilful or neglectful. Ruin asks not how, 
but only requires the fact. 

This loyalty includes obedience to each 
new revelation. God makes known his 
way by steps. Sometimes beyond the step 
revealed a mountain seems to block the way 
and a chasm to yawn. Loyalty takes the 
step and receives God's care. I once visit- 
ed a mine. The entrance was a horizontal 
and narrow way running a half mile into 
the hill. A guide led me, yet in the dark- 
ness I could not see him. One step could 
be dimly seen. In my timidity it seemed 
to me I was about to fall into some unseen 
pit. Only the voice of the guide could be 
heard, "Follow me and all will be well." 
Step by step I obeyed, and when the end 
was reached and I looked back I could see 
plainly the way through which I had come. 
There w^ere pitfalls and protruding rocks, 
but in obeying the guide I was safe. So 
was it with Israel. Destruction often 
seemed to await them. Still God com- 
manded, ' ' Speak unto the children of Israel 
that they move forward." When they 



The scriptures and NATIONAI, like. 21 

obeyed, they were kept. When they re- 
belled, they were punished. At the mo- 
ment of action it was a matter of faith. 
At the end of each experience it was a mat- 
ter of clearest sight. 

The second condition required of Israel, if 
it would receive the special care of God, 
was that it should be free from sinful in- 
dulgences. The disobedience of Kden was 
for the sake of indulgence. Achan s covet 
ousness brought a severe defeat upon all 
Israel. Saul's desire 'or ^ood and property 
led him to disobey God's command, and the 
Lord repented that he had made vSaul king 
over Israel. David sinned, and David and his 
people suffered. Whatsoever a nation sow- 
eth that shall it also leap. Sow the wmd and 
reap the whirlwind. Indulgence is dis- 
loyalty to God. At heart it is a traitor. 
Leprosy appeared on the surface, but was a 
disease of the blood and meant the death ot 
the victim, unless God himself became the 
physician. National worldliness is a dis- 
ease of the nation's blood. None but the 
Lord of nations can cure it and turn death 
into life. The nation that is impure shall 
die. Purity, like dew to a plant, is a na- 
tion's nectar of life. Sodom and Gomorraq 



22 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

are black monuments marking the end of a 
voluptuous people. 

The third scriptural condition which a 
nation must fulfil if it would receive the 
special care of God is that it engage heart- 
ily in the work to which he calls it. God's 
purpose looks forward to fulfilment in a 
perfect world. The vision of the Revelat:ir 
as he sees a new heaven and earth is 3'et to 
be realized upon this earth. Men look at 
years and storms and wrecks, and cry, 
''What shall be the end?" God beholds 
the eternities, and answers, "A new heaven 
and a new earth. ' ' The nation that enters 
heartily into its part of this work has 
pledged to its protection and victory the 
power of God. Israel refuses to do its di- 
vinely appointed tasks, and Israel is over- 
come by its enemies. Denial of its mission 
meant Egyptian slavery. Denial of Christ 
and its w^ork for him brought, as the Scrip- 
tures v^arned, national destruction and cen- 
turies, not 3^et ended, of individual heart- 
ache and shame. What might not Israel 
have been had she taken up the task im- 
posed. The refusal of a tree to respond, 
when the sunshines upon it and says, " Put 
forth thy leaf and blossom and fruit," is its 



THE SCRIPTURES AND NATIONAI, IJFK. 2^ 

own death warrant. A nation refusing the 
tvork to which God calls it becomes its own 
executioner. National service for human- 
ity in the name of God is assured life and 
divine care. It has all the strength of the 
cause which it champions. It has the 
greater strength of a pure heart and an un- 
selfish purpose, that saw the cause and led 
it to its support. This is likeness to God. 
This is God in the hearts of its citizens. 
This is assured national life. 

"For who that leans on His right arm 

Was ever yet forsaken ? 
What righteous cause can suffer harm 

If he its part has taken ? 
Though wild and loud, 
And dark the cloud, 
Behind its folds 
His hand upholds 
The calm sky of to-morrow." 

The aim in the following chapters is to re- 
call such facts of our national position and 
history as indicate the marked evidences of 
providential care and purpose in the estab- 
lishment and development of this nation, 
and to impress the supreme importance of 
its present problems and work. To do this 
exhaustively would require a large volume. 
1 desire only to suggest in compact form 



24 PROVIDENCE IX AMERICA. 

those things that in themselves shall en- 
lighten and inspire the great host of those 
who are j ust taking up the responsibilities 
of citizenship. The careful student will 
find, I am sure, as great proof of divine 
purpose and aid in America's past and pres- 
ent as in Israel's marvelous history. 



God said, I am tired of kings, 

I suffer them no more ; 
Up to my ear the morning brings 

The outrage of the poor. 

Lo ! I uncover the land 

Which I hid of old time in the west. 
As the sculptor uncovers the statue 

When he has wrought his best. 

I will have neve^' a noble, 

No lineage counted great; 
Fishers and choppers and plowmen 

Shall constitute a state. 

And ye shall succor men; 

'Tis nobleness to serve; 
Help them who cannot help again; 

Beware from right to swerve. 

— Ralph Waldo Einersoti. 



II. 

PROVIDENCE IN ITS DISCOVERY. 

The child who sees the falHng stars at 
night, or hears his father tell of the irregu- 
lar orbit of a comet, maj^ think the universe 
is run by chance; but the astronomer who 
has studied the rotation of each heavenly 
body, the revolution of the planets around 
the sun, the relation of our solar system to 
other systems, and the lightning-like flight 
of all through space, sees a unity and har- 
mony that bespeak wisdom. The careless 
reader of history, seeing the ruins of nations 
and civilizations, might think this world 
the result of passion and chance; but the 
student, tracing causes to effects and effects 
to causes, surveying the movements of each 
age and the relation of the ages, sees in all 
the working out of a beneficent purpose, 
the unity and harmony that indicate om- 
nipotent wisdom. 

Paul is declaring this same fact when, in 
speaking of Christ's coming to the earth, 
he says, ' ' When the fullness of the time was 
come, God sent forth his Son to redeem 
them that were under the law." At the 
earliest moment, then, when the world was 



28 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

in such condition that Christ's coming 
would accomplish its purpose, God sent 
him forth on his errand of mercy. Each 
step of civilization forward has been the 
coming of the Son of God, in the fullness of 
the time, to redeem the world. The Ref- 
ormation came at the time when it would 
accomplish the work so much needed. The 
work of the Wesleys, and that of William 
Carey, was each the coming of Christ, in 
the fullness of the time, to redeem those un- 
der the law. 

Whittier evidently had this fact, as well 
as the swift flight of the centuries, in mind, 
when he wrote the first lines of his Cen- 
tennial Ode: 

"Our fathers' God ! from out whose hand 
The centuries fall like grains of sand." 

And the aged Bancroft, sending out the 
last volume of his history, and summing up 
the convictions to which his studies had 
brought him, was led to declare the same 
purport: "That the path of humanity is 
still fresh with the dews of morning, that 
the Redeemer of the nations liveth. ' ' 

We believe that a careful study of gen- 
eral history, as well as of the history of this 
nation, will disclose the same divine pur- 



PORVIDENCE IN ITS DISCOVREY. 29 

pose and human necessity in the discovery 
of America. In the fullness of the time it 
came, at that moment when the progress of 
the world depended upon it. 

This appears clear when we study the 
condition of the old world. The tenth 
century was a time of great depression. 
Intellectually, Christendom was dead. The 
people at large were grossly ignorant and 
superstitious. The few trained in the 
schools had all intuition and love of the 
truth destroyed by pedantry and formality. 

' ' The massive vengeance of the church 
hung over them, like a heavy sword sus- 
pended in the cloudy air. Superstition and 
stupidity hedged them in on every side, so 
that sorcery and magic seemed the only 
means of winning power over nature or in- 
sight into mysteries surrounding human 
life. The path from darkness to light was 
lost; thought was involved in allegory; the 
study of nature had been perverted into an 
inept system of grotesque and pious parable- 
mongering; the pursuit of truth had become 
a game of worldly dialectics. The other 
world, with its imagined heaven and hell, 
haunted the conscience like a nightmare. 
However sweet this world seemed, however 



30 providence; in america. 

fair the flesh, both world and flesh were 
theoretically given over to the devil. It 
was not worth while to master and econo- 
mize the resources of this earth, to utilize 
the goods and ameliorate the evils of this 
life; while every one agreed, in theory at 
any rate, that the present was but a bad 
prelude to an infinitely worse or infinitely 
better future. ' ' ' 

The moral condition had reached its low- 
est point. Popes and rulers set the pace of 
immorality. It was the time when the 
famous trio of courtesans, Theodora and 
her daughters Theodora and Marzona, gov- 
erned for years the pontificate, bestowing it 
on their lovers or bastard sons. John XII. , 
who was raised to the papacy in 956, turned 
the pontifical palace into a vast school of 
prostitution. He was followed in office by 
Benedict V., Benedict VI., and Boniface, 
who murdered his successor. Thus the 
record reads, until in 1033 Benedict IX., 
was raised by bribery to the ofiice. So 
vicious was he that the writers of that day 
blushed to tell the story of his vices. 
Gregory VI. purchased the office from 
him. The monasteries were the places of 

1 Encyclopaedia Britannica. 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS DISCOVERY. 3I 

all vices. Cattle were stabled in the basil- 
ica of the monastery of St. Paul. Priests 
played dice on the altar, and made up the 
order of worship with indecent songs, filthy 
jokes, and drunken revelries. These were 
the beginning of the priestly orgies of a 
later day in France and other lands. Dr. 
Storrs closes a review of this terrible cen- 
tury with these words : " It is certainly not 
too much to say that no other period has 
appeared surpassing that in the general 
gloom and fear of Christendom since the 
Son of God was crucified on Calvary. The 
earth again seemed to shiver, as under the 
cross; the heavens to be veiling themselves 
in eclipse, like that which of old had 
shrouded Jerusalem from the sixth hour to 
the ninth. It looked as if the gospel had 
failed; as if the church had wholly lost di- 
vine virtue amid the carnival of lust and 
blood; as if the wickedness of man had be- 
come too great to be longer endured; as if 
the history of the planet were about to be 
closed, might properly be closed, amid uni- 
versal dread and death. ' ' ^ 

I will not draw the picture in greater de- 
tail. The student can multiply the sicken- 

1 Bernard of Clairvaux. Dr. Storrs, p. 66. 



32 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

ing facts that only intensify the hint that I 
have given. 

Education was a hideous dummy; moral- 
ity an apple decayed at heart and rind; lib- 
erty's emblem a prison. But the reaction 
set in. 1 can no more than state the fact in 
the limits of this chapter. Education re- 
vived. Reformers arose who attacked the 
corruptions of church and society. The cru- 
sades showed a new spirit of life. Men 
were now restless not for dissipation, but 
under it. Society was more courageous. 
Moral forces were more respected. In the 
evening twilight of the eleventh century 
the ' * Angelus ' ' and ' * Ave Maria ' ' were 
chimed forth to call the people to give 
thanks and to pray. They were really call- 
ing the world to a new life. These forces in- 
creased until the Renaissance, the revival of 
learning, and finally the Reformation, were 
accomplished. Men learned by the Refor- 
mation that the soul is free from the tyranny 
of earthly rulers; that personal faith alone 
saves; that churches have no power to con- 
demn; that every man is a priest unto God, 
and that each person must do his own 
thinking, make his own decisions, and bear 
his own responsibility. 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS DISCOVERY. 33 

The newly established state churches, 
though they v^^ere founded in a protest 
against the opposites of all these, were not 
willing to grant these privileges and rights 
to 'those under their control. The people 
were restless. Having once fought for lib- 
erty and won, they were not ready to suffer 
the same tyranny under another name. 

The next step in the progress of civiliza- 
tion must be the founding of a nation, 
where the principle established by the Ref- 
ormation shall be realized in laws and prac- 
tice. Established power was too strong in 
the countries of the old world to yield. 
There. must be a new land. Education, 
liberty, and faith will die without it. Hu- 
man nature would not have been equal to 
the struggle had there been no new land. 
An American writer declares, ' ' The discov- 
ery of America was necessary to the pres- 
ervation of human liberty — necessary to 
the .securing of it." 

At this moment Columbus by his voyage 
set the world a-craze. Other daring navi- 
gators pursued the search. America was at 
last discovered and opened to the oppressed. 
The old world countries, for many reasons, 
would rather rid their lands of these inde- 



34 providence; in America. 

pendent fanatics, if by thus doing they 
could gain new territory and gold, than to 
shut them in dungeons. They did both, 
little realizing that they were hastening on 
the destruction of their tyranny and open- 
ing a land that should furnish the world an 
example of intelHgence and liberty. In the 
fullness of time it has come; at that mo- 
ment when it shall redeem them that are 
under the law of oppression, which is the 
law of intellectual and spiritual death. 

The general movement in all lands to- 
ward exploration is a significant fact. It is 
thus that great and providential moments 
come. The revival of learning seemed to 
begin in all lands at the same general time. 
The Reformation held its course in England, 
France, Italy, Bohemia, and Germany in the 
same general way and to the same sea, 
though in different national channels, shut 
out from each other's view by mountain 
barriers. At this time, when the world 
must have a new continent, the minds of 
the daring in all lands were turned toward 
CNiploration. Spain, Portugal, England, 
Italy, France, and others, all thought that 
expeditions must be sent out. I see in this, 
as I do in all such universal movements, the 



providence; in its discovery. 35 

working out of a purpose that includes all 
nations, and works for perfect personal 
and civil righteousness. Greed prompted 
many, but even the wickedness of men is 
overruled to work out the world's re- 
demption and the praise of God. 

Preceding these explorations, invention 
brought its necessary gifts. Foremost 
among these inventions was that of print- 
ing. The Chinese had practised this art 
twelve hundred years before. Its discovery 
in Germany in 1450 seems to have come in- 
dependently. Coster of Holland one day 
carved for his amusement some letters up- 
on a branch. He wrapped it in a piece of 
paper and fell asleep. It rained, and when 
he awoke the paper bore the impression of 
the letters. Gutenberg followed this with 
the invention of movable types, and in 1455 
printed the Bible. The literature of the 
world was now within the reach of all. 
Tyrants might destroy the man, but his 
words would still live. In the next centur}^ 
came several printed editions of the Bible in 
England. The intellectual quickening 
which came through this invention cannot 
be fully appreciated. Ac<?ounts of travel 
and discoveries were in great demand. A 



36 PROVIDKNCE IN AMERICA. 

new day had dawned. 

The invention and use of the mariner's 
compass and astrolabe were potent causes. 
When men could tell the points of the com.- 
pass and the longitude and latitude of their 
course the sea was robbed of half of its 
terror. Copernicus came with his world- 
changing discovery. Bacon brought later 
his priceless gift. Providence was prepar- 
ing the world for some opportunity. 

The history of the different explorations 
is a continual illustration of our theme. 
The peculiar training of Columbus, his 
strange meeting with Juan Perez, the con- 
fessor of Queen Isabella, the queen's inter- 
est, and the launching of the expedition are 
not mere accidents. The variations of the 
compass, leading Columbus to discover the 
island of San Salvador and not the main 
continent, changed the history of the new 
world. It was for Cabot, an Englishman, 
to lay claim to the main land. Bancroft 
says of the early period of exploration: 
* ' The character of the prevalent winds and 
currents was unknown. The possibility of 
making a direct passage was but gradually 
discovered. The imagined dangers were 
infinite, the real dangers from tempests and 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS DISCOVERY, 37 

shipv^Teck, famine and mutinies, heat anc 
cold, diseases known and unknown, were 
incalculable. The ships at first employed 
were generally of less than one hundred tons' 
burden; two of those of Columbus were 
without a deck; Frobisher sailed in a vessel 
of but twenty-five tons. Columbus was 
cast away twice, and once remained for 
eight months on an island, without any 
communication with the civilized w^orld. 
Roberval, Parmenius, Gilbert — and how 
many others? — went down at sea; and such 
was the state of the art of navigation that 
intrepidity and skill were unavailing 
against the elements without the 
favor of Heaven." Whether it was 
better that England should have the 
right of discovery than Spain, can be judged 
by the vastly different conditions of those 
two countries today. Liberty is better than 
tyranny; schools than bull-fights. 



The breaking waves dashed hign 

On a stern and rock-bound coast, 
And the woods against a stormy sky 

Their giant branches tossed; 
And the heavy night hung dark 

The hills and waters o'er, 
When a band of exiles moored their bark 

On the wild New England shore. 

Not as the conqueror comes. 

They, the true-hearted, came; 
Not with the roll of the stirring drums, 

And the trumpet that sings of fame; 
Amidst the storm they sang, 

And the stars heard, and the sea; 
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang 

To the anthem of the free. 

What sought they thus afar ? 
Bright jewels of the mine? 

The wealth of seas, the spoils of war ? 
They sought a faith's pure shrine ! 

Ay, call it holy ground. 

The soil where first they trod; 

They have left unstained what there they found- 
Freedom to worship God. 

— Felicia He7}ia7is. 



III. 

PROVIDENCE IN ITS PHYSICAL FEATURES. ' 

Soil and climate, as well as men and great 
principles, have had their part in producing 
America. This nation and its achievements 
could not have been without its peculiar 
ph5'sical features. A study of these natural 
conditions will help us to understand our 
history and to appreciate in larger measure 
our responsibility and opportunity. 

The distance from New York to Chicago, 
as the crow flies, is about seven hundred 
and thirty miles. Yet this is scarcely more 
than one-fourth the width of our territory 
east and west. Its greatest length, from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific, on the parallel 
of 42°, is 2768 miles, and its greatest 
breadth, from Point Isabel, Texas, to the 
northern boundary near Pembina, Minne- 
sota, is 1650 miles. The total area is 
2,308,866,560 acres, or 3,607,604 square 
miles. It equals nearly four times the com- 
bined territory of Italy, Germany, France, 
Switzerland, Great Britain, Greece, Den- 

1. I am indebted in the preparation of this chapter to 
"Our Country," chaoter 2; the census reports, the yearly 
Almanac, etn. 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS PHYSICAL FEATURES. .} I 

mark, Portugal, Austria, and Ireland. It 
could be divided into sixty states, each as 
large as England and Wales. It is equal in 
area to eighteen states like Spain, to thirty- 
one like Italy, and fourteen like France. 
Two countries as large as China proper 
could be made out of it, and the remnants 
would form several countries like the 
smaller European states. The kingdom of 
Prussia, consisting of thirteen provinces, 
has an area of 136,050 square miles. 
Twenty-six countries of that size could be 
formed out of our territory. Japan, with its 
39,000,000 of population, has an area of only 
148,456 square miles. These figures can 
only suggest, like guide-boards, the direc- 
tion of a long way. To appreciate the dis- 
tance the traveler must go over roads lead- 
ing east and west, north and south, and see 
for himself. The European visiting our 
Fair, having traveled with a steed that out- 
ran the wind, when drawing near Chicago 
would often be seen studying, with an 
amazed expression, the guide to San Fran- 
cisco. A new idea had entered his mind. 
It needs to dawn in the mind of every 
American. To us much has been given. 
Excluding Alaska our territory is con- 



42 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

tiguous. The empire of Great Britain is 
divided and scattered the world over. This 
is a significant fact, and gives us certain ad- 
vantages and power. Our territory is not 
only compact but also isolated. It is sepa- 
rated from the strong, old world nations by 
thousands of miles of sea. Until the recent 
improvements in water travel, we lived in a 
world by ourselves. The ocean was our 
army of defense. 

The bearing of these facts of territory up- 
on our national life need to be indicated be- 
fore we consider other national features. 

1. The extent of our territory encour- 
ages a spirit of independence and catholicity. 
The very greatness of our area enlarges our 
conceptions of citizenship and of charity. 
The different local interests make men in- 
dependent and compel them to be broad in 
spirit. Had this continent to which our 
fathers came been small, and they crowded 
together with the same interests, their ideas 
of independence and liberty might have 
been as narrow as their land. 

2. The isolated position has played an 
important part in our history. Had it not 
been thus shut off from the world, it would 
have been settled and over-run and fought 



providence: in its physical features. ^13 

over, as old world countries were, before 
the time when the world must have a new 
land. This would have at least delayed the 
progress of the world's great causes many 
centuries, and would have been an unspeak- 
able calamity. 

3. Had the separation been less, the in- 
terchange of ideas would have been such 
that our thinking and living would have 
been shaped by the old ideas and standards. 
Men had to do their thinking, under new 
and peculiar conditions, with little knowl- 
edge of what the rest of the world thought 
or did. This was in itself a great advantage. 
I^ife under such conditions would by ne- 
cessity enlarge its horizon. Those who 
dared venture upon unknown seas and into 
a wild continent would not be slow in ex- 
ploring new lauds of ideas. 

4. This isolation has shaped our growth 
b}^ checking the tide of immigration. Had 
this not been so, there would have been lit- 
tle opportunity for the colonists to adapt 
themselves to the new conditions. The 
ideas which they brought with them would 
have continued to control their conduct. 
The difficulties of travel, in keeping many 
from coming, gave to those here the neces- 



44 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

sary factor of time to become adapted to the 
new conditions. 

5. The old separation into classes would 
have remained had not the settlers been cut 
off from the rest of the world. With one 
common struggle for bread, with the same 
dangers threatening, and the same prob- 
lems for all, the man of noble family was 
brought into very close sympathy and living 
with his humble neighbor, who in turn soon 
had the delusion of divine rights torn away 
and saw that the man of position was made 
of the same stuff as himself. Hunger and 
common dangers create a democracy of 
spirit and effort. This condition was one 
of the forces that led to a representative 
government in this land. 

6. Had we not been removed from the 
rest of the world, we would have been en- 
gaged, as they have been, in frequent wars 
with other countries. Thus would our time 
and strength have been expended for that 
which is not bread. We have not been 
compelled to keep a large standing army. 
Our resources, material and moral, have 
been given to the building of a nation that 
represents in its spirit and ideals those prin- 



providence: in its physicai. features. 15 

ciples that work toward the redemption of 
the world. 

7. These natural conditions have 
brought another happy result. Had we 
been engaged in broils with other lands, our 
territory would undoubtedly have been 
divided and many of the leading powers 
would be now controlling portions of it. It 
is possible that our civil war might have 
furnished such an opportunity. In suffer- 
ing this, America would have been removed 
from the nations, and the part it has played 
would never have been. Liberty might yet 
be languishing in dungeons. 

With the advantages of extent and loca- 
tion of territory are almost unlimited min- 
eral resources. The value of the coal mined 
during 1894 at the place of production was 
$184,721,871; of lime $28,375,000; of stone 
$34,332,916; of salt $5,396,956, and of nat- 
ural gas $11,990,000. The metals speak for 
themselves. The value of the aluminum 
mined in 1894 ^^as $490,560. The copper 
mined was valued at $35,179,997 in 1893, 
and at $33,540,489 in 1S94. "The output of 
gold for 1893 was $35, 955. 000, and for 1894 
$39,761,205; of silver $47,311,000 for 1893, 
and $31,403,531 for 1894, while pig iron for 



46 ROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

the years 1893-4 was valued at $93,888,300 
and $71,966,364. The total mineral prod- 
uct of the United States reached the sum of 
$615,887,108 in 1893, and $553,362,996 in 
1894. The falling off in 1894 is owing to the 
approach of hard times. One-half the world's 
product of gold and silver is in the United 
States. Mulhall estimates the area in 
square miles of the coal-fields of the world 
as follows : China and Japan, 200,000 ; 
United States, 194,000 ; India, 35,000 ; Rus- 
sia, 27,000 ; Great Britain, 9000 ; Germany, 
3600; France, iSoo ; Belgium, Spain, and 
other countries, 1400. Total, 471,800. 

Statistics could be multiplied to show the 
inexhaustible resources under our soil. 
Dr. Strong forcibly says, "Iron ore is to-day 
mined in twenty-three of our states. A 
number of them could supply the world's 
demand. Our coal measures are simply in- 
exhaustible. English coal-pits, already 
deep, are being deepened, so that the cost 
of coal mining in Great Britain is presum- 
ably increasing, while we have coal enough 
near the surface to supply us for centuries. 
When storing away the fuel for the ages, 
God knew the place and work to which he 
had appointed us, and gave us twenty times 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS PHYSICAI. FEATURES. 47 

as much of this concrete power as to all the 
peoples of Europe. ' ' 

And the resources of the mines are out- 
rivaled by the products of the soil. The 
figures are astounding. The total acreage, 
yield, and value of farm products for 1894 
was as follows: 





Acres. 


Bushels. 


Value. 


Wheat. . . 


. 34,882,436 


460,267,416 


$225,902,025 


Corn . . . . 


. 62,582,269 


1,212,770,052 


554,719,162 


Oats . . . , 


• 27,023,553 


662,086,928 


214,816,920 


Rye . . . . 


1,944,780 


26,727,615 


13,394,476 


Buckwheat 


• 789,232 


12,668,200 


7,040,238 


Potatoes . 


• 2,737,973 


170,787,338 


91,527,787 


Hay. . . . 


48,321,272 


54,874,408 


468,578,321 


Barley. • . 


. 3,170,602 


61,400,465 


27,134,127 



The amount of wheat produced in the 
period of 1850-1894 is 5,581,293,134 bush- 
els. For 1S93 ^^^ value of the corn crop 
was $591,625,627; wheat, $313,171,381; 
oats, $187,576,092. After feeding our 64,- 
000,000 inhabitants, there was exported 
from the crop of 1893, 30,211, 154 bushels of 
corn, 88,415,230 bushels of wheat, and 
5, 750, 266 bushels of oats. The export from 
the yield of wheat of 1892 was 117,121,109 
bushels. This immense yield has been from 
a comparatively small acreage. The total 
acreage of wheat, corn, oats, rye, buck- 
wheat, potatoes, and hay for 1894 (see above 
table) was 181,652,117. 



48 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

The arable land in this country will 
exceed, I am sure, 1,800,000 square miles. 
Japan, with a population of 39,000,000, has 
a total area of 148,456 square miles. Sev- 
eral of her many islands are little more than 
bare rocks. Volcanoes and hills are fre- 
quent. China proper has not more than 
one-half the arable land of the United 
States, and yet her population, which is 
largely rural, is estimated from 35O; 000,000 
to 400,000,000. 

Dr. Strong estimates, on the basis of 
1,500,000 square miles of land thoroughly 
cultivated, that our agricultural products 
would sustain a population of i ,012,000,000. 
The influence of the resources of the soil 
upon our life is traceable. It means that 
this nation is independent of support of 
other lands, that its commercial future is 
assured, that here there will be money and 
power with which to work out the problems 
of society, and that it will always have an 
influential voice in the deliberations of the 
nations. 

The amount of arable land makes us a 
nation of farmers. This is a significant 
fact. It is an assurance that the citizens 
will be persons of physical strength and 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS PHYSICAI. FEATURES. 49 

health. This is necessary for national 
greatness. 

This insures to us, as a people, intellect- 
ual strength and health. It is a proverb 
among us that our great men have come up 
to their positions of leadership from the 
farm. The effect upon the mind of the 
close contact and struggle with the soil is 
marked. The writer asked a c'ass in one 
of our public schools to name twenty per- 
sons whose lives had helped to shape this 
country for good. Out of those named, six- 
teen were born and spent their early years 
upon the farm. 

Moral, as well as physical and intellectual, 
results are dependent upon the fact that we 
are an agricultural people. There is some- 
thing in the close contact with the soil, in 
the every-day association with nature, that 
gives men moral fiber. The cities in every 
state are its weakness, its strength is the 
country. Illinois' safety is in that part of 
its territory outside of its great metropolis. 
The rural population of New York is its 
hope. ' ' The vast reserve vital forces of the 
rural districts supply the physical, mental, 
and moral nourishment without \\hich our 



50 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

great city populations would hopelessly de- 
generate. ' ' 

The study of present day reforms in 
the light of these suggestions will give 
to the careful student many instructive 
facts. Before the time comes that our pop- 
ulation is dense, while yet v^e have this 
great advantage, we must so rid our land of 
its internal enemies and strengthen it in its 
moral life that it can stand the stress of fut- 
ure storms. 

The record of the acquirement of vast 
stretches of our territory is luminous with 
the rays of providence. The rehearsal of 
the history of Oregon, California, or Loui- 
siana would of itself make a book. The 
parts which Marcus Whitman, General Fre- 
mont and others played in this great na- 
tional drama are thrilling when reviewed 
on the printed page. A large part of the 
west belonged first to Spain by right of ex- 
ploration, then came into the control of 
France, then into joint ownership of Eng- 
land and America, and at last w^e acquired 
full title. Marked as it is wdth the scars of 
human selfishness, yet in all this history the 
purpose of wisdom, the overruling hand of 
God, can be clearly traced. Disastrous tO' 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS PHYSICAL FEATURES. 



5^ 



the United States and to the world would it 
have been, if another nation had ruled the 
west. 

Climate has breathed into our other pos- 
sibilities the breath of life. The United 
States lies in the temperate zone. If the 
greatest length had been from north to 
south, the climate would have been different 
over nearly half the country. While it lies 
within the temperate zone, it extends far 
enough north and south to have an almost 
inclusive vegetation. This varied climate 
makes us comparatively independent of the 
products of other lands. This gives a cer- 
tain independence in matters of character 
and conduct that is necessary to the highest 
national development. A temperate clima te 
has an invigorating eifect upon tempera- 
ment. Open your atlas and history of the 
old world and contrast the achievements of 
countries in reference to climate. Princi- 
ples, then climate, determine the course of 
nations. Scotland and England have had 
both, and note the results. The mountain 
whites were true to the Union. Those in 
the valley below sought to disrupt it. The 
changes of seasons that follow so rapidly 
upon each other in the temperate zone make 



52 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

a people quicker in mind and more able to 
adapt itself to the demands of new problems 
and opporttinities. The nations in the tern 
perate zone, if they are true to their climatic 
advantages, will be leaders in the march of 
civilization. 

Added to America's territory, resources, 
and climate are her mountain systems. 
The giant, undisturbed peaks, the leaping 
torrents, the roaring winds, the clear, life- 
giving air, the broad horizon, and the im- 
pressive silences, are in themselves makers 
of men. 

' ' They proclaim 
The everlasting creed of liberty. 
That creed is written on the untrampled snow. 
Thundered by torrents w^hich no power can hold, 
Save that of God, when he sends forth his cold, 
And breathed by winds that through the free 
heavens blow." 

The Scots, the Switz, the mountain 
whites, the New Englanders, and the other 
mountain dwellers of our land, will not fail, 
if properly taught, to be peoples of courage 
and moral vis ons. The air they breathe 
is charged with freedom. The vegetation 
may be scant, but the crop of manhood is 
large and well developed. In all the threat- 
ening storms that shall come to this nation, 



PROVIDKNCK IN ITS PHVvSICAI, KKATURKS. 53 

we shall expect to hear from its mountains 
the words of Tell: 

' ' Blow on ! This is the land of liberty ! ' ' 

and they will give the valleys below the 
breath of physical and moral health. 

Flowing between these mountain systems 
are gift-bearing rivers. The Mississippi 
drains an area of 1,226,600 square miles. 
The greatest length of this system is over 
4000 miles. The Columbia, the most of 
whose course is in the United States, is 
over 1200 miles in length. The Hudson 
and the Connecticut in the east, and the 
unnumbered others throughout our land, 
are all benefactors. Their influence upon 
our history is easily traced, though not 
thoroughly appreciated. They multiply the 
fertility and productiveness of the soil. 
Their valleys are known as the gardens of 
America. They minister to the health of 
our people. Who can estimate th? sanitary 
value of the Hudson to the dwellers along 
its course, especially to the great cities at its 
mouth ? Some have asserted that a large 
part of the valley of the Mississippi in the 
south would be uninhabitable were it not 
for the invigorating and purifying effect of 
the river. The rivers w^ere necessary to the 



54 PROVIDENCI3 IN AMERICA. 

growth of manufacturing. In the days 
when electricit}' 's mission was to frighten, 
we should have been helpless had it not 
been for the rivers. In this w^ay they stim- 
ulated invention. With the power of a 
Niagara running to waste, man will not stop 
thinking until it does his bidding. The 
blockade of the Mississippi during the Re- 
bellion proved that this country can never 
be divided. This great river, with its arms 
reaching out and inclosing a continent in 
itself, is an assurance that this nation shall 
always be "one and indissoluble." Com- 
merce thus joins its voice with liberty to de- 
mand the preservation of the Union. 

]\Iany of these lessons are suggested again 
as we study the influence of the great fresh- 
water lakes. Were it not for them the 
gathering of such populations as now cen- 
ter in Chicago, Cleveland, and Buffalo, for 
purely sanitary reasons, would be impossi- 
ble. They are becoming more and more 
the territory where the manufactories cen- 
ter. This system of lakes, as the great 
equalizer of freight rates between the east 
and the west, has assisted in the develop- 
ment of the whole land. 

And l:as not this inland sea given to the 



TROVIDKNCK IN ITS PHYSICAI, FEATURES. 55 

dwellers on its shores something of its bold- 
ness, its breadth of horizon, and its inde- 
pendence ? The time is not far distant 
when the ocean steamers will coTHe to these 
cities with the treasures of all lands and 
climes. 

lyooking at the physical features of Amer- 
ica we are led to beheve w^ith Goodrich 
that ''the Infinite Mind has prepared this 
country for some notable progress in the 
history of the race' ' ; to understand now one 
cause of what Mr. Cryce calls the hopeful- 
ness of the American people; and to exclaim 
wath Matthew Arnold, "America holds the 
uture . ' ' 



O God, beneath thy guiding hand 

Our exiled fathers crossed the sea, 
And when Ihey trod the wintry strand 

With prayer and psalm they worshiped thee. 

Thou heardst, well pleased, the song, the prayer- 
Thy blessing came ; and still its power 

Shall onward through all ages bsar 
The memory of that holy hour. 

What change ! th'-ough pathless wilds no more 
The fierce and naked savage roams ; 

Swc:t praise, along the cultured shore, 
Breaks from ten thousand happy homes. 

lyaws, freedom, truth, and faith in God 
Came with those exiles o'er the waves, 

And where their pilgrim feet have trod 
The God they trusted guards their graves. 

And here thy name, O God of love. 
Their children's children shall adore, 

Till these eternal hills remove, 

And spring adorns the earth no more. 

— Leonard Bacon, 



IV. 



PROVIDKNCK IN ITS SKTTLEMKNT. 

What America will be in itself and to the 
world depends more upon those that settled 
it than upon its natural features. Ideas 
and principles shape civilization more than 
air and acres. 

All nations were struggling to win Amer- 
ica. They had different ideas, and hence 
varying civilizations. The one that settles 
America will give to this land its peculiar 
characteristics. England at last won. She 
established in 1607 the colony at Jamestown, 
and in 1620 the one at Plymouth. The 
Dutch settled New York, but never pressed 
their claims to success. The French grasped 
Quebec. The Spaniards explored the 
islands along the southern coast, and found- 
ed St. Augustine and Santa Fe. 

We cannot go over the bitter strug- 
gles of these nations to gain this new 
land. England at last secured a foot- 
hold that gave her the control of New Eng- 
land and south to Florida. The French 
and Indian wars gave England the un- 
known wastes stretching westward. Is 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS SETTLEMENT. 59 

it an advantage to civilization to have the 
Anglo-Saxon occupy the temperate zone of 
this great country and give shape to its 
life? He who gives time and study to the 
peoples that sought to settle this country 
and to shape its life will be impressed with 
the peculiar fitness of this race in character 
and ideas to mold a new civilization that 
should represent the best things in liberty 
and righteousness. 

It is an industrious and thrifty race. 
The industry and thrift of the English peo- 
ple have become proverbial. 

These qualities have in a peculiar way 
marked the Anglo-Saxon in America. 
John Fiske writes of the population of New 
England : ' ' The emigration was pre-emi- 
nent for its respectability. I^ike the best 
part of the emigration to Virginia, it con- 
sisted largely of country squires and yeo- 
men. The men who followed Winthrop 
were thrifty and prosperous in their old 
homes, from which their devotion to an 
idea made them voluntary exiles. They 
attached so much importance to regular in- 
dustry and decorous behavior that for a 
long time the needy and shiftless people 
who usually trouble in new colonies were 



6o PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

not tolerated among them." ^ The same is 
true of the Plymouth Colony and of the 
Dutch that settled New York. No other 
nations have, through all their history, 
rivaled the early settlers in these two char- 
acteristics. This fact speaks volumes for 
the mo-al as well as commercial future of 
any country. " A lazy man is of no more 
use than a dead man, and he takes up more 
room." A company of shiftless men can 
never found and build a progressive nation. 
The Anglo-Saxon race has always been pe- 
culiarly energetic. It was formed by the 
welding together of a daring, hardy race 
with a solid, courageous one. In America 
it has had the daring of the Spaniard plus 
the steadiness of the Englishman and the 
brilliancy of the Frenchman. 

Endurance has always been one of its 
characteristics. ' ' Never give up ' ' has been 
the watchword. Alfred the Great, coming 
forth from his hiding-place in the marsh, 
the nobles and the Great Charter, Cromwell 
and his Ironsides, the Independents, Wash- 
ington at Valley Forge, Grant in the Wil- 
derness, are illustrations selected from 
Anglo-Saxon history, which bristles with 

1 " The Beginnings of New England," p. 141. 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS SETTI.EMENT. 6l 

examples ot grit, grip, and pluck. 

Others have marked the Puritan's en- 
thusiasm and practical common sense. As 
he pored over his Bible and drank of its in- 
spiration and caught a view of its perfect 
ideals, as he looked over the earth and saw 
its evils and the growth of the kingdom of 
heaven, his soul was thrilled, and he saw 
his place in the struggle and entered into it 
with all the depths of his stern nature 
aroused. He lived in that region which 
Whipple describes as "a region of spiritual 
ideas and spiritual persons, where youth is 
perpetual, where ecstasy is no transient 
mood but a permanent condition, and 
where dwell the awful forces which radiate 
immortal life into the will. ' ' 

From these elements that mark in a pe- 
culiar degree the history of this race that 
shaped America we learn that it has been 
a race of unusual intelligence and depth of 
character. What it is has always been 
more effective than what it has done. Its 
controlling influence has been that noble- 
ness of which one of its poets sings: 

"Better not be at all 
Than not be noble." 

* ' In all history , ' ' says John Fiske, ' * there 



62 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

has been no other instance of colonization 
so exclusively effected by picked and chosen 
men. The colonists knew this and were 
proud of it, as well they might be. It was 
the simple truth that was spoken by William 
Stoughton when he said, in his election ser- 
mon of 1688, 'God sifted a whole nation 
that he might send choice grain into the 
wilderness. ' " ^ Many sought this country 
for commercial ends, but it was left for stern 
men of principles to settle it. " How dis- 
tinctly did Providence say, as colony after 
colony came to this virgin land, ' I have 
not chosen you.' Thus passed the greedy 
throngs who thought to claim this magnifi- 
cent inheritance, only to be whelmed by the 
surges of disaster. " 1 

Why, then, should we wonder at what 
they have wrought ? It is only another illus- 
tration of the power of manhood. "One 
ruddy drop of manly blood the raging sea 
outweighs." 

We must look deeper than this to under- 
stand the Anglo-Saxon. Character is, in 
great measure, the result of principles. 
Great principles produce great character, 
and selfish motives are the source of weak- 

1 " The Beginninjrs of New England," p. 143. 

2 Jesse D. Peck, D.D., "History of the Great Republic " 



PROVIDENCK IN ITS SETTI^EMENT. 63 

ness. The character of the early settlers of 
America was based upon the fundamental 
princioles of all abiding civilization. 

1 . The real principle was living faith in 
Christ. It swept away all dependence upon 
formalities. It branded as fraud the sale of 
indulgences. It brought the soul into per- 
sonal relationship with Christ for its salva- 
tion and into daily communion with him 
for its life. 

2. The formal principle was the supreme 
authority of the Scriptures as a rule of faith 
and practice. This cast aside the tradition 
and decisions of past ages as unequal to the 
Scriptures. Thus the world was directed 
to a common and never-changing source of 
light and authority. It was a return, as 
was Protestantism, from human authority to 
the authority of the Scriptures. 

3. The social principle was the forming 
of a community of which Christ is the indi- 
vidual head and of which all the members 
are priests unto God. Every man thus 
must be the final court of appeal as to what 
the Scriptures teach and what God asks of 
him. No company of men, however high 
in ecclesiastical circles or learned, has the 
right to force its interpretations of the 



64 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

Scriptures or the will of God upon another. ^ 
Dr. Schaff puts it tersely, in speaking 
of Romanism and Protestantism, " Roman- 
ism throws Mary and the saints between 
Christ and the believer; Protestantism goes 
directly to the Saviour." - 

Understanding the motives that actuated 
the builders of America, we are prepared to 
appreciate the type of civilization that has 
come from these beginnings. The Anglo- 
Saxon has always, in a crude way, repre- 
sented civil liberty. Under the influences 
of the Reformation he has been made free 
and the messenger of freedom. Dr. Strong 
wrote in 18S5, " Nearly all of the civil lib- 
erty of the world is enjoyed by Anglo-Sax- 
ons: the Hnglioh, the British colonists, and 
the people of the United States. To some, 
like the Swiss, it is permitted by the suffer- 
ance of their neighbors; others, like the 
French, have experimented with it; but in 
modern times the peoples whose love of 
liberty has won it and whose genius for self- 
government has preserved it have been 
Anglo-Saxon." ^ 

I See Dr. Hagenbach— Tkeol. Studien. N. Kritiken, 
Jan., 1854, art. 1. 
2 Christian Intelligencer, Jan. 14, 1869. 
3 " Our Country." p. 208. 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS SETTLEMENT. 65. 

Such a race is of necessity an intelligent 
one. He who weighs the truth for him- 
self, who walks with God in personal com- 
munion, who reads and understands the 
Scriptures, and who wages war upon tyran- 
nies old and strong, is a man of thought. 
Men do not stumble blindly into such 
courses of life. The iVnglo-Saxon thinks, 
and so he builds schools and colleges. Al- 
fred founded schools and taught fundamen- 
tal principles in them, and England is the 
fruitage. The founders of our nation estab- 
lished schools where great principles were 
taught, and America is the result. 

' ' According to that [Puritan] theory it 
was absolutely essential that every one 
should be taught from early childhood how 
to read and understand the Bible. So much 
instruction as this was assumed to be a 
sacred duty which the community owed to 
every child from within its jurisdiction ? " ' 
From these basic principles of Anglo-Saxon 
character by necessity came the town meet- 
ing, the independent and scholarly ministry, 
and the free discussion of public questions 
that was carried on in the family, neighbor- 
hood, and community. Such principles will 

2 " The Begininngs of New England," John Fiske. p. 151 



66 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

give what we find the Anglo-Saxon has had, 
a spiritual and evangelistic type of Chris- 
tianity. We see this in the history of Eng- 
land and America. We see this in the sim- 
ple ideas of church membership, in the 
multiplied and varied activities of the 
Christians of Anglo-Saxon lands, contrasted 
with others, and in the amount given for the 
support of missions. Dr. Strong states that, 
the year the Congregationalists of the 
United States gave one dollar and thirty- 
seven cents per capita to foreign missions, 
the members of the German state church 
gave only three-quarters of a cent per mem- 
ber for the same work. ^ To-day a multitude 
in the United States — in every city and 
hamlet they are found — are living in per- 
sonal communion with Christ, and are pray- 
ing and living and giving for the world- 
wide success of pure Christianity. 

The bearing of these facts upon the 
world's progress toward perfect freedom 
and righteousness appears more clearly 
when we consider the principles of the 
other nations that sought to settle this 
country, and the results of those ideas as 
they have born fruit in this and other lands. 

1 "Our Country," p. 209. 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS SETTLEMENT. 67 

The Spaniard and the Frenchman each 
sought to bring this newly discovered land 
under the dominion of his country, and to 
give it his peculiar type of civilization. 
These nations are based upon certain simi- 
lar ideas. They may be in general and yet 
truly characterized as the opposites of the 
p/inciples and ideas which we have de- 
scribed above. 

1. In religious life they insist upon the 
necessity of every person becoming a mem- 
ber of a certain division of the Christian 
church. This church is called the channel 
of grace. Christ is where the Roman 
church is; thus membership in a visible or- 
ganization really takes the place of personal 
faith. 

2. Tradition, decisions of councils, and 
the power of the church are first, and the 
Scriptures second. The pope decides what 
the teachings of the Scriptures are. 

3. No member has the right to decide 
what the Scriptures teach. He must take 
the decisions of the ecclesiastical head. 
The right of private interpretation and 
judgment is denied. 

The type of civilization coming from such 
controlling ideas will be different than that 



68 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

flowing from the principles of Anglo-Saxon 
life. Theory and history here testify with 
one voice. The masses of the people of 
these nations have had in the past no liber- 
ty. Unlimited monarchies have reigned. 
The struggle in Italy, Spain, and France to 
attain religious toleration has been a terrific 
one. In this conflict the ecclesiastical power 
has opposed anything like catholicity in 
the treatment of other faiths. 

The Anglo-Saxon has sometimes been a 
bigot and has persecuted, but it has come 
from the narrowness of the age and from 
imperfect human nature, and was opposed to 
the principles he professeci. The basic 
principles of the Anglo-Saxon faith mean 
in their natural results civil and religious 
freedom. The basic ideas of the faith of the 
other nations that sought control of this 
land, when ripened to their natural fruit- 
age, mean civil and religious tyranny. 

And, if the common people have no free 
responsibilities in church and state, there 
will never be among them any wide intel- 
ligence. Ignorance is the essential to a 
civil or religious absolute monarchy. 

Monarchy and the town meeting do not 
live under the same roof. So in these coun- 



PROVIDENCE IX ITS SETTLEMENT. 69 

tries under consideration there has been no 
effort on the part of the authorities to fur- 
nish schools for the people. The Scriptures 
have been kept from the body of the people. 
The per cent of illiteracy is great. The 
colleges, except for the candidates for the 
clergy, are few. Under the pressure of out- 
side civilization and the stern necessity for 
national self-preservation, these states have 
in recent times insisted upon schools, and 
non-sectarian schools, and have made nota- 
ble advances. It has been done in spite of 
their religious theories. 

Another natural and lamentable out- 
growth of such theories will be a sensual 
and non-evangelistic type of Christianity, or 
a falling away into infidelity. These we 
find in a marked way in these countries. 
Images and pictures and beads, confes- 
sions to priests, and penance are prominent 
factors in the religious worship and life. 
Thus idolatry abounds, for it is none the 
less disobedient to the first commandment 
to worship saints and Mary the mother of 
Jesus, and to bow before images and trust 
to the intercession of a human priest, than 
it is to bow before the crocodile and to wor- 
ship Osiris. 



70 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

To one who believes that God intends 
this world to enjoy sometime perfect civil 
and religious freedom, and its inhabitants to 
live righteously and in daily communion 
with himself, and its different divisions of 
the church to work together in unity of 
spirit, each true to conscience and with the 
broadest charity, the possession of Amer- 
ica by the Anglo-Saxon means much. He 
sees in this fact not only the freedom of 
America to-day but its perfect freedom to- 
morrow, and the influence that this people 
shall have in the emancipation of the world. 
He sees in all this the beneficent purpose of 
God, and he is glad. 



Our fathers' God ! from out whose hand 
The centuries fall like grains of sand, 
We meet to-day, united, free, 
And loyal to our land and thee, 
To thank thee for the era done, 
And trust thee for the opening one. 

Here, where of old, by thy design, 
The fathers spake that word of thine 
Whos2 echo is the glad refrain 
Of rended bolt and falling chain, 
To grace our festal time, from all 
The zones of earth our guests we call. 

For art and labor met in truce, 
For beauty mad2 the bride of use, 
We thank thee ; but, withal, we crave 
The austere virtues strong to save, 
The honor proof to place or gold. 
The manhood never bought nor sold. 

Oh, make thou us, through centuries long, 
In peace secure, in justice strong ; 
Around our gift of freedom draw 
The safeguards of thy righteous law; 
And, cast in some diviner mold. 
Let the nsv/ cycle shame the old ! 

— John Greenleaf Whtttier. 



V. 

PROVIDENCE IN ITS DEVELOPMENT, 

The statement is credited to Mr. Glad- 
stone that the first fifty years of the present 
century outran all the preceding centuries 
in achievement, and that this period was 
surpassed by the next quarter of a century, 
and this by the ten years from 1875 to 1885. 
The common facts of history are proof of 
this assertion. If all the inventions of the 
last century were to be destroyed, we would 
be back again to primitive ways of living 
and working. The farmer would be using 
the sickle, and the housewife would be lim- 
ited in utensils, and living in a home bare 
of pictures, books, furnace, piano, and other 
things considered necessities to-day. The 
manufactories would nearly all be closed. 
The traveler wou'd be slowly pressing his 
way over muddy roads by team. The mes- 
sages of love and business would be creep- 
ing along by "pony express." The nations 
would be separated by weeks of ocean. 

The educational ruin would be appaUing. 
The colleges — the most of them — would not 
qe at work. The public libraries would be 



74 PROVIDKNCE IN AMERICA. 

gone. The books out of which to form 
them would be ashes. The unnumbered, 
associations whose aim is the enUghtenment 
of the people would be unorganized. 

Morally we would have back the clank- 
ing chain of the slave and the fetters of 
many an evil which the last century has 
either broken or raised up a company 
pledged to its destruction. 

The careless observer can see that the de- 
struction of the distinctly religious achieve- 
ments of the last century would turn the 
world a long way back. The most of those 
organizations of the church through which 
its purpose reaches out to win the world 
and bless the needy have come within the 
century or nearly so. While visiting the 
"White City" at Chicago one day, the 
alarm of fire w^as heard. The thought 
flashed through my mind that these ex- 
hibits had had their natal hour in the cen- 
tury in w^hich the Fair is held, and that if a 
fire had power to destroy these products 
of a hundred years and all they represent 
we would have little to exhibit. It is a 
pleasure to give in this chapter the bare out- 
line of America's achievements since the 
time when the early settlers commenced to 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS DEVEI.OPMENT. 75 

work out the problems of the race in this 
new land under new conditions. 

The steam engine, the telegraph, the tel- 
ephone, the many lines of railroads, the 
wide use of the printing-press and the tele- 
scope, the microscope, the reaper, have all 
come during the nineteenth century. They 
have wrought i evolutions. They have 
touched the world as with a magician's 
wand. They have been to it like the warm 
showers to the slumbering earth in the 
springtime. They have destroyed all iso- 
lation. We are neighbors. Railroads carry 
us to distant states as hoises once carried us 
to contiguous neighborhoods. Telegraph 
and telephone have brought the different 
parts of the earth together, and we ' ' speak 
to each other over the back fence. " It is 
more and more impossible for oppression to 
live. Evil deeds come to the light. The 
Turk is eventually doomed, because the Ar- 
menian is our neighbor and the deeds of 
death are open to the world. Invention has 
enriched the life of every one. There are 
fake prophets that curse machinery as the 
arch enemy of the poor and w^eak. It is 
their benefactor. It has visited the farm 
and the cold floors are covered with carpets, 



76 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

the bare walls are hung with pictures, the 
organ and piano add their songs, books and 
magazines come as messengers of light, the 
rough, unwieldly plow, the drag (a limb of 
some generous tree), the sickle, the flail, 
with the long hours of severe toil, are gone, 
and in their stead machinery with horse or 
steam power does the work. Invention 
has brought its gifts to the hospital and the 
home of sickness and driven out much of 
the pain. It has placed within the hands 
of the sailor a chart and compass, and has 
robbed the sea of much of its terror. A 
quarter of a century ago only the rich 
could ride; now the poor man saves his 
money by using the car. It has shortened 
the hours of labor and given the laborer 
leisure for rest and study. It has brought 
to the poor man the literature and art of all 
ages. Wages are higher, necessities and 
luxuries are cheaper, and the opportunities 
for improvement are multiplied. 

The educational improvement is equrlly 
marked. The opportunities for securing an 
education are increased. The public school 
system has come, and a course of study as 
thorough as the college course of a century 
ago is within reach of every one. Acade- 



AMERICA IN ITS DEVELOPMENT. 77 

mies abound. Colleges have sprung up in 
profusion. Machinery has made it possible 
for the father to spare his boys to the col- 
lege. Kindergartens are taking the chil- 
dren and training the faculties from the be- 
ginning in the natural way. Reading cir- 
cles and clubs, assemblies and lecture 
courses, correspondence schools, university 
extension instruction, are ministering an- 
gels. Physical culture aims to furnish a 
healthy body for the trained mind. The 
aim is, nationally, that every child shall be 
thus trained. History and the science of 
government is now a part of the public 
school curriculum. In the colleges the 
study of sociology and of the English ver- 
sion of the Bible have a recognized and im- 
portant place. The improvement in the 
methods of teaching is as marked as the im- 
provement in the studies taught and the 
multiplication of schools. The old way of 
putting all children through the same hop- 
per, to be ground up in the same mill and 
to come out the same brand of flour, has 
passed away. The personality of the child 
is taken into account. The aim is to edu- 
cate, to lead out the pupil. Education has 
come to be a growth, and not a process of 



78 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

manufacture. 

The moral development has kept pace 
with the material and intellectual. Amer- 
ica has established three things for liberty. 
First, that the right to tax implies that the 
one taxed has the right of representation. 
It took a long and terrible war to bring 
this principle its proper recognition. The 
world has the example of one nation insist- 
ing successfully that the right of imposing 
taxes rests with the people and not with 
kings and outside nations. Second, that 
a people can found a representative govern- 
ment that is equal to all the emergencies of 
a century — including strife — and that faces 
with confidence the difficulties of the fut- 
ure. Third, that freedom and rights are 
not conditioned upon race peculiarities. 
None are slaves, but all are free. It takes 
only a word to enumerate these changes, but 
they hold in them continent and world des- 
tinies. So we call the earth's mighty 
waters " ocean," though none can fully ap- 
preciate its influence upon climate and life. 
These achievements alone would make the 
century a notable one. Had the United 
States won no other moral victories than 
these during all her history she would have 



AMERICA IN ITS DEVEI^OPMENT. 79 

accomplished a work incomputably helpful. 
But other gains have been made. 

The growth in temperance sentiment is 
significant. There are those living who can 
remember the first temperance pledge ever 
urged upon the people. In substance it 
was a promise not to drink certain liquors 
except at the time of the raising of build- 
ings, the washing of sheep, and upon cer- 
tain national holidays. This expressed the 
advancad sentiment of the day. It was bit- 
terly opposed as a cast-iron pledge. To-day 
total abstinence is an accepted fact among 
temperance workers. The battle has won 
this position and swept on to other heights. 
The accepted ideal of the reformers of to- 
day is the prohibition of the liquor trafiic. 
Men differ as to the method, some urg- 
ing a third party, some a non-partisan 
league, and others other methods, but all 
are agreed that the saloon must go. It was 
a great achievement when a small number 
of agitators, though they differed in method, 
were agreed upon the destruction of slavery. 
This ideal meant a future realization. This 
ideal of the temperance forces means in the 
future a country freed from the saloon as 
an institution. 



So PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

This change of sentiment is seen in the 
attitude of the church toward the evil. 
Fifty 3'ears ago ministers took stimu- 
lants before entering the pulpit, and few 
thought anything of it. Saloon keepers and 
brewers were often in good standing in the 
churches, and even at a later date promi- 
nent members of churches rented their prop- 
erty for saloon purposes. In some of the 
divisions of the Christian church those are 
not now admitted to membership who have 
even in a remote way any connection with 
the liquor business, and the ministers al- 
most to a man are total abstainers. This 
position of a part of the church is prophetic 
of great results. When the church grap- 
ples in earnest with this curse the victory 
will not be long in coming. 

The moral development of this country in 
its political life is clearly seen. While cor- 
ruption is wide-spread and the patriot is 
anxious for his country, still there are signs 
of promise on the horizon. Books are com- 
ing from the press. The best of the daily 
press is gathering and puttiing into every 
citizen's hand the facts of corruption. 
Good citizenship clubs are studying muni- 
cipal questions and trying to free the cities 



AMERICA IN ITS DEVEIvOPMKNT. Si 

from corrupt rule. Pulpits are thundering 
away against demagogues and boodle alder- 
men. The citizens at large are coming to 
appreciate this evil and the dangers arising 
from it. Agitation is going on in a multi- 
tude of ways. Agitation is to the health 
of nations what the opening of windows is 
to dark and unhealthy rooms. 

The religious development of this coun- 
try has kept pace with the material, intel- 
lectual, and moral advance. I do not care 
to record the statistics that so abundantly 
prove this statement. Dr. Dorchester and 
the last census reports are ready witnesses. 
There has been an advance of which figures 
cannot speak. 

I. Christ has become the center of the 
religious thought and life. A half century 
ago, as Dr. Fairbairn points out, a minister's 
library consisted of books upon apologetics, 
theism, design, the attributes of God, proof 
of the resurrection, the formation of the 
canon, and the credibility of the gospel his- 
tory. Calvinism and Arminianism, the di- 
vine origin of the episcopacy, and the dif- 
ferent church creeds, would have many 
volumes representing them on the shelves. 
To-day it is different. The scholarship of 



82 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

to-day dwells upon the person of Christ. 
The great works of theology in the last 
few years bear such titles as these : 
"The Gospel for an Age of Doubt," 
''The Christ of To-day," "The Place 
of Christ in Modern Theology." This 
change finds a striking illustration in the 
questions asked by a conservative church of 
those who wish to become members on con- 
fession of faith. ( I ) " Do you accept Christ, 
the only begotten Son of God, as your per- 
sonal Saviour? " (2) " Do you promise to 
be loyal to him in all the relationships of 
life? " (3) " Do you promise to be loyal to 
his work as carried on by this church so 
long as you are a member? " 

2. With this change in the thought of the 
church has come a new purpose to minister 
to the world. The mind of Christ has been 
more the mind of his people. A quarter of 
a century ago you could easily enumerate 
the organizations that aimed to reach the 
overlooked. To-day the cities are dotted 
with missions, social settlements, barracks, 
Sunday schools, kindergartens, nurseries, 
and other institutions that exist for the sole 
purpose of helping the weak and the de- 
graded. The open churches are becoming 



AMERICA IN ITS DEVEIyOPMENT. 83 

a large army. Their doors are open during 
the entire week, and their aim is to minis- 
ter in Christ's name and spirit to the physi- 
cal, mental, moral, social, and religious 
needs of the community. 

3. A new doctrine of wealth is finding a 
place in the thought and preaching of the 
church. It is insisting that money must be 
honestly obtained and unselfishly used. 
The new gospel of wealth has come to stay, 
and, though too few seem to heed its mes- 
sage, yet its power is growing. 

4. With a clearer view of Christ has come 
a growing unity among his followers. The 
different religious bodies unite in many 
forms of service and often in w^orship. This 
spirit is seen in the establishment of new 
churches by the different denominational 
boards. A church united in spirit is a 
victorious church. The gates of hell can- 
not prevail against it. 

If we were to look for special providences 
in the development of America, the illustra- 
tions would be many and striking. That 
the religious ideas and spirit of the Pil- 
grims, and not the narrower ideas and spirit 
of the Puritans and the colony in the south, 
gave shape to the religious thought and 



84 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

temper of this nation, is an illustration of 
the purpose of God. 

In the founding of many colleges of this 
land we see the overruling hand of God. 
Whether Oberlin should admit all races and 
both sexes hung upon the decision of one 
man, and he opposed their admission. 
Prayer, united and long continued, was the 
new force that entered in and shaped the re- 
sult. In the locating and founding on the 
part of the American Missionary Associa- 
tion and others of the schools in the south 
are distinct evidences of providential care. 
One of the best evidences of this providence 
is the organization of the American Mis- 
sionary Association itself. Between the 
years of 1650 and 1800 very few immigrants 
landed on these shores. Had it been differ- 
ent, this country could never have wrought 
out the great problems which were upon it 
for solution. John Fiske, in "The Begin- 
nings of New England," tells how in the 
early history of Massachusetts the legisla- 
ture divided into two bodies over a foolish 
lawsuit as to the possession of a pig. Out 
of similarly insignificant things have come 
great and beneficent results. It is another 
illustration of a chosen generation, a royal 
priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people. 



Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State ' 

Sail on, O Union, strong and great ' 

Humanity with all its fears. 

With all the hopes of future years, 

Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! 

We know what INIaster laid thy keel, 

What workmen wrought thy ribs of steel. 

Who made each mast, and sail, and rope. 

What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 

In w4iat a forge and what a heat 

Were shaped the anchors of thy hope ! 

Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 

'Tis of the wave, and not the rock ; 

'Tis but the flapping of the sail. 

And not a lent made by the gale ! 

In spite of rock and tempest's roar. 

In spite ot fals2 lights on the shore. 

Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea ! 

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee. 

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears. 

Our faith triumphant o'er our fears. 

Are all with thee, — are all with thee ! 

— Hemy Wadsworth Lono/elloza. 



VI, 

PROVIDENCE IN ITS CRITICAL PERIODS. 

The cathedral of Dom has made the city 
of Cologne famous. Each century has 
added a gift of labor and sacrifice toward 
its completion. A multitude of hands have 
wrought to realize the plans of Gerhard 
von Rile. So has the temple of liberty and 
righteousness been building during the cen- 
turies. Each century has brought some 
priceless gift of hand and brain and heart. 
A multitude have wrought to realize the 
perfect plan of God. 

The great struggles of America are not 
isolated facts, but are near of kin to the 
historic battles of freedom. The careful 
student finds in the critical periods of Amer- 
ica's history many indications of this pur- 
pose. 

On Nov. 11-2 1 the occupants of 
the Mayflower drew up a covenant and 
signed it as the basis of their relationship in 
the new country. It had in it the germs of 
a republic: "In the name of God, amen. 
We whose names are vinder- written, the 
loyall subjects of our dread soveraigiie Eord, 



88 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

King James, by the grace of God of Great 
Britaine, France, and Ireland, King, De- 
fender of the faith, etc. 

"Having vndertaken for the glory of 
God, and advancement of the Christian 
Faith, and honor of our King and Country, 
a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the 
Northerne parts of VIRGINIA, doe by 
these presents solemnly & mutually in the 
presence of God and one of another, cove- 
nant and combine our selues together into 
a civill body politike, for our better order- 
ing and preservation, and furtherance of the 
ends aforesaid; and by vertue hereof to 
enact, constitute, and frame such iust and 
equall Lawes, Ordinances, acts, constitu- 
tions, offices, from time to time, as shall be 
thought most meet and convenient for the 
general good of the Colony: vnto which we 
promise al due submission and obedience." 

Here we have in this covenant a recog- 
nition of the fundamental principles of a 
democracy: (i) That the allegiance of 
every person is primarily to God, and not to 
a king; (2) the recognition of the duty 
and privilege of every person to have part 
in the organization and conduct of the state. 
This is a distinct step forward in the history 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS CRITICAI, PERIODS. 89 

of representative government. Such seeds 
v^hen grown to fruitage bear representative 
rights, representative governments, and race 
freedom. Following out these principles 
John Carver . is chosen governor. These 
men were forerunners of the American na- 
tion. How is it that this small company, 
when all nations are empires and mankind 
looks at kings as divine, sees visions and 
dreams dreams ? To speak of this as one of 
the accidents of history is to think as the 
fool thinketh. 

To trace the development of these new 
principles during the next century would 
be impossible within the limits of this vol- 
ume. George Bancroft and John Fiske 
have done this wdth the powers of genius. 
The royal governors were trying to conduct 
the affairs of the colonies according to the 
standard and spirit of England. But life 
here was different. The freedom of the 
mother country had enlarged its vision. As 
a result the people objected to many of the 
measures of the government. 

They maintained in New Hampshire that 
as freeborn Englishmen they had the right 
to choose their representatives. In Massa- 
chusetts a thirty years' controversy was 



go PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

waged in regard to the governor's salary. 
Exaggerated reports were made to the lords 
of trade, and England came to consider the 
colonists as lawless. They attempted to 
limit the powers of the settlers. The lords 
of trade sought to bring about a union of all 
the colonists which would destroy local self- 
government. The leaders in America fa- 
vored a union, but insisted upon local self- 
government. The people were probably 
opposed to any union. In 1754 the Albany 
plan was formulated. It was the child of 
Franklin's mind. Public opinion was rwt 
yet ready for such a government. The 
French and Indian wars turned the atten- 
tion for a time into other channels. Then 
came the " Writ of Assistance," and the ar- 
gument of James Otis against this law before 
the court made so great an impression upon 
the people that the scene in the court-room 
has since been remembered, and not un- 
justly, as the opening scene in the Ameri- 
can revolution. In 1761 the power to re- 
move the chief justice of New York was 
placed in the hands ot the crown. In 1762 
the assembly of Massachusetts refused to 
pay the sum of four hundred pounds, which 
expense Governor Bernard had incurred 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS CRITICAL PERIODS. QT 

without the assent of the assembly. In 
1765 the stamp act was passed. America 
was indignant, church bells were tolled, 
flags were at half-mast, the act was reprint- 
ed with a death's head as its coat of arms. 
Virginia under the lead of Patrick Henry 
drew up those indignant resolutions that 
declared that ' ' the taxation of the people by 
themselves or by persons chosen by them- 
selves to represent them is the distinguish- 
ing characteristic of British freedom, with- 
out which the ancient constitution cannot 
exist." Representatives of New York, 
Massachusetts, South Carolina, Pennsyl- 
vania, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, 
Delaware, and Rhode Island met and for- 
mulated a set of resolutions addressed to the 
king and parliament. The effigy of Oliver 
was burned on Fort Hill. Boxes of stamps 
were destroyed. England, seeing that the 
law could not be enforced, considered the 
advisability of repealing it. The debate in 
the House of Commons was a bitter one. 
It was at this time that Pitt championed the 
cause of America. He insisted that the 
principle for which the Americans were 
contending was the heart of English liberty. 
"America," said he, "if she fell, would 



Q2 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

fall like the strong man, with his arms 
around the pillars of the constitution." 
The act was repealed and the declaratory 
act was passed. America's joy knew no 
bounds' Then came the infamous policy of 
Charles Townsend and of George the III. 
The petition of the Massachusetts assembly 
enraged the king. The legislature of Mas- 
sachusetts was ordered to rescind it. 
Otis replied, " Let Britain rescind her meas- 
ure, or the colonies are lost to her forever." 
Citizens were seized and compelled to labor 
as seamen. The struggle continued to de- 
velop. The Boston massacre made the 
colonists more determined. The commit- 
tees of correspondence wereestabUshed, and 
brought the colonists nearer together. 
George III. asserted at this time the ob- 
noxious tea-tax law. The Boston Tea 
Party convened. Mr. Fiske calls it "the 
colossal event," and says, *' For the quiet 
sublimity of reasonable but dauntless moral 
purpose the heroic annals of Greece and 
Rome can show us no greater scene than 
that which the Old South Meeting House 
witnessed on the day when the tea was de- 
stroyed." England responded with the 
Boston Port bill, the regulating act, and 



providence: in its CRITICAI. PERIODS. 93 

Other unjust measures. Massachusetts de- 
fied the regulating act. The Boston Port 
bill rallied all the colonies to the support of 
Massachusetts. Preparations for the de- 
fense of their rights were made by the col- 
onists. Concord, Lexington, and Bunker 
Hill soon followed. The second Continent- 
al Congress convened and appointed 
Washington commander-in-chief. He drove 
the British from Boston. Events multiplied 
rapidly, and discussion went on which led 
to the Declaration of Independence on the 
fourth of July, 1776. The long years of 
strife that followed are familiar to every 
school child. The victory was as great as 
it was seemingly impossible. 

The moral sweep of the war and of the 
events which preceded it is clearly seen. 
The French and Indian wars had prepared 
the colonists for the struggle. England had 
been compelled by the complications at 
home to leave the responsibilities of those 
early struggles to the colonies. It seemed 
a calamity at the time, but proved a wase 
teacher. 

Providence is seen in the clearness with 
which the leaders in America saw the prin- 
ciples at issue and the methods by which 



94 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

they were to be established. Washington, 
Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, and others 
seemed almost omniscient. When the Bos- 
ton port was closed Franklin wrote that 
perhaps it might be well to pay for the tea 
destroyed. Gadsden with clear insight and 
rugged diction advised, "Don't pay an 
ounce of the damned tea." The wife of 
John Adams wrote him after the insulting 
proclamation of George III., " This intelli- 
gence will make a plain path for you though 
a dangerous one. I could not join to-day 
in the petition of our worthy pastor for a 
reconciliation between our no longer parent 
state, but tyrant state, and these colonies. 
Let us separate: they are unworthy to be 
our brethren. Instead of supplications, as 
formerly, for their prosperity and happiness, 
let us beseech the Almighty to blast their 
counsels and bring to naught all their de- 
vices." 

The causes are clearly the causes of God. 
They are the lineal descendants of the Re- 
naissance, the Reformation, and the gospel 
of Christ. They are the ancestors of every 
reform of this advancing generation. The 
time had come when these truths must win 
a foothold in the hostile world. Imperivsh- 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS CRITICAL PERIODS. 



95 



able ideas were breaking up through the 
crust of civilization. 

The power of the colonies was beyond the 
power of their numbers and resources. 
They were only a handful. They had few 
resources. They were untrained in military 
warfare. General Gage offered to put down 
the whole rebellion with four regiments. 
England looked at the colonists as a set of 
unruly children who needed only to be 
spanked to become submissive. She did 
not appreciate the strength of an aroused 
moral sentiment. She failed to take ac- 
count of the conquering power of the truth. 
Back of the colonists was the truth. Back 
of the truth is God. Numbers count but 
little. Fidelity, wisdom, and sacrifice meet 
the conditions. 

The unity of the people is a significant 
fact. General Gage declared to the king 
that the other colonists would not support 
Massachusetts in her foolish undertaking. 
The colonies had been jealous of each other, 
but when the critical moment came they 
stood as one. It was the only hope of all. 
That all should see this and respond is as 
much the leading of providence as the giv- 
ing: of the Ten Commandments. Had the 



96 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA, 

Declaration cf Independence come before it 
did, it would not Ii^lvg been received; had it 
come later it would have passed the time of 
greatest influence. 

Immediately following the revolution 
came the period of great depression. The 
Articles of Confederation gave Congress lit- 
tle power. It could enforce nothing. It 
could not levy taxes to pay the heavy debt 
incurred by the war. The colonies were 
jealous of each other. Public opinion fa- 
vored the independence of each state. Men 
refused to pay their taxes and threatened to 
overturn the government. Washington 
said, " We are one nation to-day and thir- 
teen to-morrow." It seemed that all of the 
results of the war were to avail nothing. 
John Fiske writes, " It is not too much to 
say that a period of five 3'ears following the 
peace of 17S3 was the most critical moment 
of all the history of the American people." 

The worst hardships of the war were due 
largely to the absence of a centralized gov- 
ernment. Now that the common struggle 
was over, the old jealousies broke out again. 
At this critical time, through the foresight 
of Washington and others, a convention was 
called in Philadelphia to revise the Articles 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS CRITICAI, PERIODS. 97 

of Confederation. The destiny of America 
was at stake. To have given the world at 
this time a representative nation meant 
more to the world than any other fact of its 
history except the coming of Christ. Had 
several small nations been formed, the whole 
history of America since that time would 
have been a record of petty strifes^ which 
would have ended in Europe securing our 
territory. A nation was founded that was 
able to stand the storm of 1861-65. Mr. 
Gladstone called the work of our federal con- 
vention " the finest specimen of construc- 
tive statesmanship that the world has ever 
seen." He also says, " The American con- 
stitution is the most wonderful work ever 
struck off at a given time by the brain and 
purpose of man." Few amendments have 
been made. It seems to be forever settled 
that this government is one and indissoluble. 
And when we consider the long weeks of 
seemingly hopeless discussion, until Wash- 
ington wrote that he wished he had had 
nothing to do with the convention, as noth- 
ing would be accomplished, we see the work- 
ings of Providence. The constitution of 
the United States is as much the gift of God 
as the commandments on the tables of stone. 



98 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

Different plans were presented, but at last 
like a flash of light the form which we now 
have dawned upon the mind of one of the 
leaders. Men do not of themselves sudden- 
ly shake off ideas and principles that have 
been held sacred for generations. The time 
had come when a new principle of national 
life must take root in the world. 

Providence appears in the adoption of the 
constitution by the different states. It is 
true in general that the colonies were 
against the constitution. In spite of the in- 
fluence of the leaders it often seemed in 
some of the states that it would be rejected. 
The fact that Washington favored it was 
the deciding influence with many. For 
weeks Hamilton argued and plead for the 
constitution before the convention at Pough- 
keepsie. To the surprise of many the states 
at last entered into the contract. 

The framers of the constitution appre- 
ciated their dependence upon God. At the 
opening of the convention, Franklin, who 
cannot be charged with an over-abundance 
of piety, reverently suggested that it be 
opened wath prayer. Washington in a crit- 
ical time of the convention closed an im- 
pressive address with these w^ords, "The 



PROVIDKNCE IN ITS CRITICAI. PERIODS. 99 

event is in the hand of God. ' ' Israel' s God 
was the God of our fathers. 

We had in America from the adoption of 
the constitution the strange anomaly of a 
free government in which there was a race 
of slaves. We can see now as some did 
then that this condition of things could not 
forever endure. Jefferson and Washington 
saw the danger, and would have been glad 
if the constitution had forbidden it. Slav- 
ery had extended itself until at the break- 
ing out of the war it claimed everything. 
Compromises were made but no sooner made 
than broken. Here and there a person ap- 
preciated the danger and uttered a protest. 
The first reformers were hunted, their prop- 
erty destroyed, and sometimes they them- 
selves shot down. The cause of freedom 
seemed a hopeless one. When in the city of 
Boston sentiment was such that the lives of 
anti slavery agitators were not safe, and in 
Illinois men were shot down, and in many 
townships a single agitator was tarred and 
feathsred, the hope of the slave was dim. 
In the House of Representatives hardy old 
Ben Wade and Joshua R. Giddings could 
not speak their opinions except at the 
muzzle of revolvers, and Charles Sumner 



lOO PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

must receive as the reward of his protest a 
brutal attack. Against these overwhelming 
odds the agitation went on. The king- 
dom of heaven cometh without obser- 
vation. At last an uprising of the people 
came. The impossible was accomplished. 
In the purpose of God the time had come 
when an illustration of the strength of free 
government was to be given, and when a 
race was to be set free. A man like Garri- 
son was no less called of God than Moses. 

The issues at stake were such that we 
may know that God was at work. The in- 
terests of commerce, of education, of morals, 
and of religion need a nation of the extent 
and principles of the United States in which 
to accomplish their mission. Had the 
Union been destroyed in i860 the cause of 
liberty would have been set back many cen- 
turies. Had it been possible to preserve the 
Union and keep slavery, oppression would 
have intrenched itself anew. 

The same wisdom seen in the Declaration 
of Independence appears in the Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation. Men urged that it be 
made before it was, others felt that it came 
too soon, but, judged by the results, Henry 
Ward Beecher waiis ght in urging it and 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS CRITICAL PERIODS. lOI 

Abraham Lincoln was right in sending it 
forth at the time it appeared. It was one 
of those pivotal moments on which turns the 
future. The power to see the supreme mo- 
ment is the gift of God. 

The place of faith in this great struggle 
is clearly seen. It was the heart of the anti- 
slavery movement. It sustained the people 
during the terrible 3^ears of the war. ' ' The 
American nation never could have gone 
through the war, with its terrible drain upon 
sympathy, treasure, and blood, if there had 
not been lodged in the national heart the 
conviction that the whole tragic movement 
concerned the Almighty. That conviction 
gave solemnity to the national purpose, and 
an infinite sanctity to the sacrifice through 
which the country was redeemed." 

When the tidings of Lincoln's assassina- 
tion reached the world Dr. Cuyler was at 
Fortress Monroe. The poor negro women 
had draped their huckster tables in black, 
and one of them said, "Yes, sah; Father 
Linkum's dead. They killed our best 
friend, but God be libin' yet. Dey can't 
kill him; I'se sure of dat." ^ 

The leadings of Providence are seen in the 

1 " Abraham Lincoln." T. Y. Crowell & Co., p. 126. 



I02 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

growth of harmony between the Federal and 
Confederate. Gradually the spirit of bitter- 
ness which was so intense at the close of the 
war has worn away. The spirit of brother- 
hood which Christ himself possessed and 
illustrated is gradually infolding society as 
the atmosphere infolds the earth. Nothing 
encouraged the dying Grant more than the 
expressions of sympathy so hearty and 
spontaneous that came to him from the 
south. ^ It was to him a prophecy of peace. 
It is the earth taking up the song of heaven, 
" Peace on earth, good will toward men." 

I'Tersonal Memoirs of U. S. Grant." Vol. II. p. 553. 



God give us men ! A time like this demands 
Strong minHs, great hearts, true faith, and ready 

hands — 
Men whom th2 love of office cannot kill ; 
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy ; 
Men who possess opinions and a will ; 
Men who have honor ; men who will not lie ; 
Men who can stand before a demagogue 
And damn his treacherous flatteries without vdnk- 

ing ! 
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog 
In public duty and in private thinking — 
For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds, 
Their large professions, and their little deeds, 
Mingle in selfish strife, lo ! Freedom weeps. 
Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps ! 
— lo'iiah Gilbert Holland. 



VII. 

PROVIDENCE IN America's leaders. 

History centers around its great person- 
alities. Cyrus molded the sixth century 
before the Christian era. Philip and Alex- 
ander gave the world the Macedonian em- 
pire. Alfred the Great laid the foundation 
of England. Cromwell v/as the life of the 
Commonwealth. No man can measure Glad- 
stone's influence upon this century of 
England's life. Bismarck welded many 
nations into united Germany. As Mr. Bryce 
points out, "Perhaps no form of govern- 
ment so needs great leaders as democracy." 
America has had such leaders. In almost 
every colony sent out there were men of 
marked personality. John Endicott, Gov. 
Winthrop, Roger Williams, Elder Brewster, 
Miles Standish, John Alden, William Penn, 
and many others were leaders. Some one 
has said that every one of revolutionary 
days was a leader. The conditions of life 
made him so. Certain it is that those who 
gathered in the Constitutional Convention 
were men of creative minds. History re- 
cords that no nation has ever had so many 



Io6 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

intelligent and unselfish leaders as America 
during its brief life. Appreciating now the 
causes which have been dependent upon its 
life, we are able to discern the Providence 
that gave us such giants in those days. 

Providence is seen also in the time these 
men appeared. Moses was ready when the 
l^ord wished a leader. Joshua had been 
prepared to take command when Moses laid 
down his work. God thus raises up lead- 
ers to suit the needs. America furnishes 
striking illustrations of this purpose. With- 
out a leader like Washington the achieve- 
ments of the first years could not have been. 
The power of this man united the colonies 
in opposition to England, and kept the 
army together and hopeful during that 
long and unequal struggle. It was his in- 
fluence more than others that led to the 
Constitutional Convention, and kept it to- 
gether during the weeks of seemingly fruit- 
less debate. Again it was Washington's 
approval of the constitution that led many 
of the colonies to accept it, and it was the 
confidence men had in him that made the 
opening years of our national life auspi- 
cious. Every colony had its leaders. Pat- 
trick Henry in Virginia first uttered the 



PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA'S LEADERS. I07 

startling cry, " Give us liberty, or give 
us death. ' ' It was a distinct step forward 
in the struggles of representative rights. 
Hamilton was ready with his financial sys- 
tem at the time when public credit was 
chaos. Later, lyovejoy and Garrison, Phil- 
lips and Beecher, aroused and led the 
thought of the continent to overwhelm 
slavery at the time when this nation must 
become either all slave or all free. It is 
not an accident that there had come up 
from the lowly walks of life a man with the 
spirit and wisdom of I^incoln to guide this 
nation during the storms of civil strife. 
And he must be blind who sees in the com- 
ing of a leader like Grant the accident of 
chance, and not the purpose of intelligence. 
Not only in the number of leaders which 
America has had, and in the time which 
they appeared, is Providence seen, but 
also in the make-up of the leaders. They 
have been men of rare mold. They were 
men of principle. They asked not what is 
pleasant, but what is right. When General 
Gage sent Colonel Fenton to Samuel Adams, 
promising him great gifts if he would re- 
cede from his position against the Port bill, 
he arose in indignation and replied, "Sir, 



Io8 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

I trust I have long since made my peace 
with the King of kings. No personal con- 
sideration shall induce me to abandon the 
righteous cause of my country. Tell Gov- 
ernor Gage it is the advice of Samuel Adams 
to him to insult no longer the feelings of an 
exasperated people. " In 1774, at the first 
Colonial Congress held in Philadelphia, the 
same rugged old statesman answered those 
who urged the following of policy instead 
of principle : " I should advise persisting in 
our struggle for liberty though it was re- 
vealed from heaven that nine hundred and 
ninety-nine were to perish, and only one 
of a thousand should survive and retain his 
liberty. One such freeman must possess 
more virtue and enjoy more happiness 
than a thousand slaves ; and let him prop- 
agate his life and transmit to them what he 
has so nobly preserved." The citizens of 
Boston voted to abstain from the use of tea 
because of the principle at stake. After 
the Boston massacre the proposition was 
made by those representing England to re- 
move the 29th regiment and to keep the 
14th. The great crowd that packed the 
Old South Church and the streets near by 
answered the proposition with the mighty 



PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA'S I^EADERS- IO9 

shout, " Both regiments or none. " Scarce- 
ly a leader in all of America's history, 
whatever his imperfections may have been, 
that has not been a man that followed prin- 
ciple. The greatest power of Washington 
rested in his character. 

Wendell Phillips dedicating his life to the 
truth is an example of American leader- 
ship. "O Lord," he prayed after listen- 
ing to Lyman Beecher, ' ' vSO take pos3es£:ion 
of me that it shall be natural for me to love 
the good, and strive for it, and to hate the 
evil and to fight it." That nation will be 
great whose leaders are men of noble char- 
acter. 

" When all have done their utmost, surely he 
Hath given the best who gives a character 
Erect and constant, which not any shock 
Of loosened elements, nor the forceful sea 
Of flowing or of ebbing fates, can stir 
From its deep bases in the living rock 
Of ancient manhood's sweet security. 
And this he gave, serenely far from pride 
As baseness, boon with prosperous stars allied. 
Part of what nobler seed shall in our loins abide. ' ' 

The leaders of the past have been un- 
selfish. They brought their property, time, 
life, and love to their country's causes. 
Robert Morris at one time gave his own. 



no PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

personal note for $1,400,000 that the Revo- 
lution might be carried on. When John 
Hancock was the presiding officer of Con- 
gress a letter was received from Washing- 
ton urging that Boston be bombarded. It 
was known that Mr. Hancock's property 
was nearly all in Boston, and the body re- 
solved itself into a committee of the whole 
that he might speak freely. "It is true, 
sir," said he, " that nearly all my property 
in the world is in houses and other real 
estate in the town of Boston ; but if the 
expulsion of the British army from it, and 
the liberty of our country, require their 
being burned to ashes, issue the order for 
that purpose immediately." Suppose that 
when the attempt w^as made to make Wash- 
ington the absolute ruler of this country he 
had been a Napoleon; its whole history 
would have been different. 

There was more than a grave humor in 
the remark made at the signing of the 
Declaration of Independence, * * We must all 
hang together, or w^e shall hang sepa- 
rately." It was the united gift of these 
mighty leaders of themselves to the cause. 
Garrison made of himself, in becoming an 
abolitionist, a hated and hunted outcast. 



PROVTDENCK IN" AMERICA'S I.EADERS. 1 1 I 

lyovejoy gave his life as his contribution 
to the cause. No country was ever freed 
from evils and enriched with national graces 
except by the sacrifice of heroic souls. 
Some one must stand alone and cry out 
against oppression and injustice. Some one 
must give the world the command, "For- 
ward, march." Character giving itself 
unselfishly has made our leaders great. 

, Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look here ! 
See one straight forward conscience put in pawn 
To win a world ; see the obedient sphere 
By bravery's simple gravitation drawn ! " 

Our leaders have possessed a simplicity 
and common sense which has enabled them 
to adapt their plans to the different demands 
of our life. They have had no false ideas 
about social position. They have trusted to 
hard-headed sense and vigorous effort for 
success. Washington comes forth from the 
farm, does his work, and returns to its sol- 
itude. The embattled farmers are more 
than the trained Britons. When Beecher 
meets the audiences of England they are 
his insulting enemies ; when he leaves them 
they are the friends of the Union. The 
first citizens of Boston are a mob when the 
young Phillips flings his first sentence at 



112 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

them ; they are patriots again when he 
leaves Faneuil Hall. 

The wide extent of our territory, the 
great prairies, the mountains and streams, 
the unlimited forests, have given to us as a 
people a simplicity and readiness to adapt 
ourselves to new conditions. Washington 
is typical of many. He was a good farm- 
er, a great general, a wise presiding offi- 
cer of the world's greatest convention, and 
a successful president. We ask not whence 
a man comes, but what he is. We are con- 
cerned not with his ancestry, but with his 
character and brains. We ask not bril- 
liancy, but a simple fidelity to duty, which 
in itself is greatness. 
" The longer on this earth we live 

And weigh the various qualities of men, 

The more we feel the high, stern-featured beauty 

Of plain devotedness to duty, 

Steadfast and still, nor paid with mortal praise, 

But finding amplest recompense 

For life's ungarlanded expense 

In work done squarely and unwasted days." 

The leaders of this land have been men 
of faith. They h?ve drawn their inspira- 
tion not from themselves, but from God. 
The Independent movement in England out 
of which grew America originated in a 



PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA'S I.EADERS. II 3 

religious life quickened by new study of the 
Scriptures. The last thing that was done 
as the little band of pilgrims entered the 
Mayflower was to hold a prayer meeting on 
the shore. Amid the discouragements at 
Valley Forge, Washington was found upon 
his knees, his cheeks wet with tears, be- 
seeching the help of God. When Sickles 
was wounded and Mr. Lincoln called upon 
him, the general asked the president how 
he felt during the Gettysburg campaign 
about its outcome. 

Mr. Lincoln expressed himself as having 
no fear, and then said, "In the pinch of 
your campaign up there, when everybody 
seemed panic-stricken and nobody could 
tell what was going to happen, oppressed 
by the gravity of our affairs, I went into 
my room one day and locked the door, and 
got down on my knees before Almighty 
God, and prayed to him mightily for vic- 
tory at Gettysburg. I told him this was 
his war, and our cause his cause, but that 
we couldn't stand another Frederickburg 
or Chancellorsville. And I then and there 
made a solemn vow to Almighty God that 
if he would stand by our boys at Gettys- 
burg I would stand by him. And he did 



114 PROVIDENCE IX AMERICA. 

and I will. And after that — I don't know 
how it was and I can't explain it — but soon 
a sweet comfort crept into my soul that 
things would go all right at Gettysburg, 
and that is why I had no fears about you.' 
Then this man of sorrows added, "I have 
been praying over Vicksburg also, because 
we need it in order to bisect the Confeder- 
acy^ and have the Mississippi flow unvexed 
to the sea." The traveler to Plymouth- 
Rock sees among the treasures sacredly 
kept an old arm-chair. A case of glass 
guards it. Its arms are worn. It belonged 
to Elder Brewster. Near by is his old 
Bible. This vision rises before the trav- 
eler: the old elder kneeling and grasping 
the arms of his chair, the Bible which he 
has read open before him, his face lifted 
toward heaven and his voice rising in 
prayer, "O Lord, led by thee, we crossed 
the unknown ocean to these wild shores. 
Half of our number are dead. Only seven, 
are able to care for the sick. Our food is 
nearly gone. We are surrounded by hos- 
tile savages. But here we remain until 
thou dost call us away. Carry on this 
helpless beginning to success. Make this 
world free and righteous. ' ' The imagina- 



PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA'S I^EADERS. 1 15 

tion of the traveler is based upon fact. 
Those who discovered our country, those 
who settled it, those who have saved and 
developed it have been men of fiith in God 
and in his divine Son. President Scliur- 
man's keen analysis of Lincoln's power 
might be made the description of America's 
leaders : "I wish to say deliberately, after 
reading many lives of I^incoln and trying 
to understand the history of the Civil War, 
that in my opinion the Union could not 
have been restored without the unseen but 
none the less real power which came to 
the nation through lyincoln's belief in God, 
and confidence in his moral government of 
the world. "^ American leadership means 
nothing unless it is a leadership of faith. 
We are workers together with God. The 
call now as ever is for leaders of principle, 
of unselfishness, of quick discernment, of 
simple fidelity to duty, and of supreme 
.aith. 

1 Aguosticistn and Religion, p. 78. 



We are living, we are dwelling, 

In a grand and awful time, 
In an age on ages telling, 

To be living is sublime. 
Hark ! the waking of the nations, 

Gog and Magog to the fray ; 
Hark ! what soundeth is creation 

Groaning for its latter day. 

Worlds are charging, heaven beholding. 

Thou hast but an hour to fight ; 
Now the blazoned cross unfolding. 

On, right onward, for the right ! 
On ! let all the soul within you 

For the truth's sake go abroad ; 
Strike, let every nerve and sinew 

Tell on ages, tell for God. 

— Arthur Cleveland Coxe. 



VIII. 

PROVIDENCE IN ITS PRESENT PERILS. 

No one except he be shallow in thought 
or courage doubts that American institu- 
tions are threatened with many and grave 
dangers. Each one of these perils has been 
stated with greater thoroughness by some 
special reformer than we can hope to do 
here. We wish to mass them together to 
give the coming citizens a view of the 
enemy's army, its numbers and fierceness, 
that seeks the death of American institu- 
tions and civilization. 

As I write, reports come from a neighbor- 
ing city that the strikers are training a 
military company of their own, and that the 
labor organizations favor such a course. 
The tendency for several years has been 
strong toward the creation of a bitter class 
feeling between the rich and the poor, the 
capitalist and the laborer. The acquiring 
of great fortunes in biief time, the control 
of the oil or coal or other products for the 
profit of a few, the flooding of this land 
with foreigners, many of whom were born 
and reared where classes exist and are en- 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS PRESENT PERILS. II9 

gaged in a death struggle, the false utter- 
ances of party papers and political dema- 
gogues, the unwise utterances found in some 
of the state papers of leading oihcials, op- 
pressive capital and anarchistic labor, have 
all helped to cultivate this destructive spirit. 
One need only to read the banners that are 
carried by some of the labor processions or 
the stock utterances of the many labor pa- 
pers that are springing up, or to note the 
sneers wealth sometimes flings at labor, to 
see that the spirit of brotherhood which is 
the strength of a democracy is far from per- 
fect even in America, and in many quarters 
is growing more hostile. 

The growing sectional spirit which would 
array the south and west against the east 
is greatly to be deplored . The interests of 
this country are one. What would injure 
one part of it would injure all. That 
which is for the interest of one part 
is for the interest of all. The interests of 
capital and labor are not different. ' ' They 
are Siamese twins. If one hits the other 
a rap, he finds he has knocked himself 
down." Careful observers are startled by 
these many signs of a growing division of 
the American people into classes marked by 



I20 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

geographical or social conditions. America 
can stand almost anything else better than 
this. 

The second danger is from a dull national 
conscience. I call this the greatest evil that 
any nation can have. It is disastrous to be 
wicked, but it is hopeless to care nothing 
about it. There are many indications of 
this deadened sense of responsibility. The 
lack of the enforcement of wholesome law 
is the most conclusive one. A nation may 
be drunken, or ignorant, or anything else, 
rather than be lawless. There are few com- 
munities where the laws of the state are sa- 
credly observed. This is destructive be- 
cause it helps to create a lawless spirit. 
But the great danger to America is seen not 
in the number of law-breakers, but in the 
indifference of the citizens that permits this 
lawlessness. In one city of twenty thou- 
sand people two hundred saloon keepers 
have for 3^ears openly violated the state laws 
in regard to the closing of the saloon on 
Sunday and the keeping of gambling dens 
and brothels. It is not because the major- 
ity of the people of the city want such a 
state of things, but because the conscience 
of good citizens is so dull that they prefer 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS PRESENT PERII.S. 121 

to let the life of the community be crushed 
out rather than put forth the effort and en- 
dure the sacrifice which would be necessary 
to enforce the law. This is more or less 
true in regard to these evils in every city 
outside of New England, and in some cities 
there. This is the danger of dangers of our 
country to-day — this indifference to the law- 
lessness and debauchery that stalk abroad. 
I^ecky, in his "Democracy and Liberty," 
says, ' ' There is one thing worse than cor- 
ruption. It is acquiescence in corruption. 
No feature of American life strikes a stran- 
ger so powerfully as this indifference, partly 
cynicism and partly good nature, with which 
the frauds and corruption in politics are en- 
dured by American public opinion. There is 
nothing, I think, weaker than this to be 
found in any great community. Many in- 
stances of corruption have been disclosed in 
France since 1870, but French opinion never 
fails to promptly punish them. In America 
unfaithfulness in public life and the ad- 
ministration of public funds seems to excite 
little more than a disdainful smile. It is 
treated as very natural, as the normal result 
of the existing form of government." 
Stern says, " The debt of the cities of the 



122 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

Union from iS6o to i8So rose frora about 
J I GO, GOG, GOO to $682,OGo,GGG. From i86g 
to 1875 the increase of debt in eleven cities 
was 2 70. 9 per cent, increase of taxation 
362.2 per cent; whereas the increase in tax- 
able valuation was but 156.9 per cent, and 
increase in population but 70 per cent." 
Lecky writes when viewing these facts, 
"The New York commissioners of 1876 
probably understood the case when they de- 
clared that more than half of all the present 
city debts in the United States are the di- 
rect result of intentional and corrupt mis- 
rule. ' ' Still the citizens permit this robbery 
to go on. Mr. Rhodes in his history as- 
serts, "It is certain that in no Teutonic 
nation of our day is the differe^nce so marked 
between the public and private standards of 
morality as in the United States. The one is 
lower than it was in iS6g ; the other, incon- 
sistent as it may seem, is higher." Mr. 
William Kent, an alderman of Chicago, rep- 
resenting the most aristocratic ward, in an 
address before one of the churches of that 
city on Sept. 13, 1896, said, "Here are 
franchises worth millions given away by a 
shameless majority of the council, some- 
times vetoed and sometimes encouraged and 



PROVIDENCK IN ITS PRESENT PERILS. 123 

signed by the mayor. Pay-roll scandals ; 
frontage brands and forgeries; every form 
of violation of civil service laws; highway 
robberies every day; a police force some of 
the members of which are worse than the 
criminals they are supposed to watch; po- 
licemen who are not permitted, if they 
would, to suppress public gambling, and 
who in spite of all forms of malfeasance are 
kept in position by political pull; justice 
shops that blackmail the unfortunate, that 
sell verdicts to good customers; constables 
who are the lowest (»f the low; saloons run- 
ning in prohibition districts on payment of 
blood money; a drainage board given over 
to spoilsmen; park boards who have to heed 
machine clamor in employing men; judges 
whose tenure of office depends upon com- 
plying with machine demands; a board of 
education still a victim of robbery, though 
nobly striving to climb up out of the mire ; 
revenues deficient from tax dodging on the 
part of citizens, and corruption in the offices 
of assessors, and a county commission 
known of all men. The food you eat, the 
water you drink, the air you breathe are 
tainted by politics. Your rights, your prop- 
erty, the very education of your children 
have long been at the mercy of the spoils- 



124 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

men." The solution of all these problems 
must come from a quickened conscience. 

The sufferance of the existence and reign 
of the demagogue is another indication of 
the inactive conscience. Men whose only 
claim to leadership is shrewdness, who 
change as each varying breeze, who appeal 
to the ignorance and passions of men, who 
seek office first and country second, are fol- 
lowed as leaders in the great political move- 
ments. That Tammany Hall, when its 
avowed motives and history are known, 
should ever be permitted to take part in the 
councils of parties is possible only by the 
sufferance of good people. Instances of 
scarcely less magnitude are within the ob- 
servation of all. 

The indifference to obligations is a sign 
of this moral dullness. Parties are elected 
upon the planks of their platforms, but 
whether those utterances are ever carried 
out is often of little care. The frequent re- 
fusal of capitalists to arbitrate the differ- 
ences between them and the laboring men, 
the recklessness of the laboring men during 
the time of strikes, the attack of a political 
party upon the supreme court, indicates a 
sad indifference to the general good of the 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS PRESENT PERILS. I25 

people and the responsibilities of citizenship. 
Yet the American people endure all this, 
when they should arise and make it impos- 
sible. 

The licensing of the American saloon is 
another indication of this lack of conscience. 
It is known by every one that the American 
saloon is a curse. It destroys manhood 
and debases citizenship. It wrecks homes, 
it corrupts legislation, it terrifies communi- 
ties. If any power on earth treated the 
dogs in the streets as the saloon treats the 
interests and welfare of society it w^ould be 
overwhelmed by the indignant people. Yet 
the great saloon system is licensed. It is 
not because a majority of the American peo- 
ple are drunken, or because they believe in 
its work of destruction, but because the con- 
science is dull, and men have not the 
strength of purpose that calls them to face 
the danger and to undertake a great moral 
reform. Worse than the saloon is the con- 
science that will legalize the saloon. 

The third danger is a growing religious 
indifference. This is undoubtedly the 
cause of the moral indifference. A careful 
study of almost any community will show 
that not over one-fifth of the people of the 



126 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

community are even irregular attendants 
at the services of the church, and 
about thirty per cent attend regularly. 
I give at some length, in Chapter X., the 
facts in regard to this. I do not care to do 
more here than to suggest the dangers of 
such indifference. First, the leading ele- 
ment of strength in every nation is its re- 
ligious character and vote. Second, an at- 
tendance at church and the consideration of 
the great themes of the Scriptures are 
necessary to a quick and faithful conscience. 
Third, indifference to spiritual responsibili- 
ties on the part of the parent brings often on 
the part of the child a moral indifference, 
and sometimes an open violation of moral ob- 
ligations. Without their strength of reli- 
gious opinion our fathers would never have 
had the courage to meet the persecutions of 
King James, or the strength of conscience 
which led them to engage in the struggle 
for the independence of the colonies. Had 
it not been for the strong religious charac- 
ter of the American people, which at last 
yielded to the appeals of the reformers, 
slavery would still be in existence. 

The fourth danger of the present is the 
decay of the family life. In the large 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS PRESENT PERILS. I27 

cities a great part of the population has no 
home life. Thousands of them are crowded 
together in the dangerous tenement houses, 
Still other thousands stay in the many large 
hotels and boarding houses that are found 
on every hand. The children grow up with 
very little strength of the home tie, and 
often with none of the home life. The 
omission of family worship bodes evil for 
the future. The Puritan and the Pilgrim 
learned of religious and civil libert}^ while 
studying around the family altar the scrip- 
tures of Wyclif and Tyndall. It will be 
found true, I think, that the majority of the 
great moral and spiritual leaders of the 
world have had this early religious training. 
There are few homes, comparatively, among 
Christians, that have family worship. This 
country can never have the moral and spis: • 
itual strength necessary for the solution of 
its problems until the family altar takes its 
proper place in the homes of its citizens. 

Add to this "an extensive carnality, be- 
ginning too often before adolescence, vitiat- 
ing the physical basis of the family ; the 
increase of intemperance, which, in aug- 
menting the lack of self-control, threatens 
the disintegration of every finer trait of 



128 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

character and the effacement of all delicate 
affection; a haste to enter upon the marital 
state, opening the door to infelicities for the 
thoroughly unmated; the refusal to assume 
the duties of maternity, known to afford the 
highest discipline to the faculties; the cor- 
relative tendency to gratification through 
illicit means and a yielding to criminality 
against which medical journals vigorously 
protest — a criminality from w^hich everyone 
should shrink and which is contrary to every 
instinct of the feminine disposition; a crimi- 
nality which would appear hideous as a 
gross violation of the sixth command were 
it thought of save in connection with the 
initial point of existence, and practised un- 
der secrecy, deluding the perpetrators into 
a belief that responsibility to the Creator for 
destruction of life begins only when it has 
assumed a tangible form." 

The number of divorces shows the decay 
of family life. The increase of this evil 
during the last thirty years is alarming. 
In 1S67 there were 9937 divorces in the 
United States; in 1886, 25,535 — thus the 
number of divorces has increased more than 
twice as fast as the population. The statis- 
tics of the last decade would only add to the 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS PRESENT PERII<S. I29 

threatening facts. New England with her 
intelligence and high moral standards has 
repeatedly granted 2000 in a single year. 
Says Lecky, "Hardly any problem affect- 
ing the future of humanity is more impor- 
tant than the type of humanity which the 
great republic of the west is destined to as- 
sume. In the opinion of many good judges 
its decay of the family life, through the ex- 
cessive multiplication of divorces, is the 
darkest cloud upon its horizon." 

This suggests another destructive influ- 
ence in our Hfe, the growth in some way of 
social immorality. The president of one of 
the great colleges of America, a school 
whose influence has always been a benedic- 
tion upon the land, said not long ago, "I 
cannot be quoted, but I confess with sor- 
row and shame that I believe nine out of 
ten of the young men of this college are im- 
moral." I cannot believe that his fears are 
true, but this much is certain, even to the 
careless observer, that a wave of filth has 
been going over this land during the past 
few years. I have consulted in confidence 
with principals and presidents of many of 
our leading academies and colleges, and I 
find that they have all been saddened and 



130 providence: IX AMERICA. 

perplexed by this new problem of col- 
lege life. If this be true in such surround- 
ings, what must it be in the general life of a 
city or community. I have gathered in a 
few small cities, by consultation with teach- 
ers, clergymen, and police officials, informa- 
tion in regard to the young men that is 
startling to one who loves his country and 
appreciates the part which this and the com- 
ing generation must take in its salvation. 
The flood of weak and vicious literature 
that has come upon us is a result and a 
cause. It would not have been possible a 
generation ago in American society for a 
young woman to be drunken and still hold 
her place. It is occasionally true now in 
what is called good society. We can only 
hint at those facts whose possession saddens 
us while we write. 

The fifth destructive influence that I 
would mention is intemperance. Financial- 
ly it takes out of the legitimate business of 
this country a sum large enough to eventual- 
ly paralyze legitimate business. A con- 
servative estimate of the cost of the liquor 
traffic to this country for the 3'ear ending 
June 30, 1889, is the best proof of this 
statement- 



PROVIDIiNCE IN ITS PRKSKNT PERILS. 131 
DIRECT COST. 

Domestic distilled spirits 83,337,811 

gal. @ $6 1500,026,866 

Domestic beer, 25, 1 19,853 bbl. @ $18. . 452, 157,334 
Domestic wines, 30,000,000 gal. @ $2 60,000,000 
Imported liquors, value to consumers . 21,993,698 

Total 11,034,177,918 

INDIRECT COST. 

Insane through drink $ 8,000,000 

Paupers through drink 8,374,889. 

Police regulations on acct. of drink . 53,000,000- 

Medical attendance and medicine. . 109,500,000 

Total $ 178,874,889. 

Total direct cost 1,034,177,918 

Total 11,213,052,807 

Total receipts from liquor traffic 135,000,000 

Ivoss to the United States . . 11,078,052,807 

These calculations are too low. The to- 
tal cost for the year computed was undoubt- 
edly J2, 000,000,000. The increase each 
year in cost is from $40,000,000 to 
$50,000,000, while the increase in receipts 
does not grow with so large per cent. This 
worse than wasted sum would have wiped 
out the national debt of that time in less 
than a year. The total value of the corn, 
wheat, and oat crop of the United States 
for 1894 was $995,438,107; the aggregate 
production of eold and silver from idQ'^ to 



132 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

1875 was $10,802,329,343. In six years the 
total loss of the United States from the 
liquor traffic would equal and probably ex- 
ceed this sum. This amount of money can- 
not be drawn from the avenues of business 
without causing want and business stagna- 
tion. 

The political influence wielded by the 
liquor power is startling. During the 
spring of 1896 a large majority of the citi- 
zens of Ohio, making up its wealth, culture, 
and manhood, petitioned the legislature to 
pass a bill submitting the question of the 
existence of the saloon in any community to 
the vote of the community. It was thought 
the united will of the citizens of the state 
would be heeded by their representatives, 
but, under the threats of the liquor power, 
this bill, seeking only to furnish an oppor- 
tunity for the expression of the will of the 
community," was voted down; the threat 
of the liquor minority having more influ- 
ence than the wish of its intelligent and 
patriotic majority. The pages of this book 
might be multiplied with illustrations of the 
deadly political influence of the saloon. 

The moral ruin of intemperance is a fa- 
miliar theme. Manhood and womanhood 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS PRESENT PERII^. I33 

are debased. Those who should be patriotic 
citizens are made lawless and unfit for citi- 
zenship. Insanity and imbecility, dwarfed 
and weakened bodies, and a dull sense of re- 
sponsibility are coming in a large crop with 
each added year. If a plague existed in the 
United States that carried away one hun- 
dred thousand of its people every year, men 
would think of nothing and attempt noth- 
ing else until this disease was destroyed. 
They would be wise, for to permit it to re- 
main would mean not only the destruction 
of one hundred thousand lives, but the ex- 
tension of death with every passing year. 
It would mean the depopulation of the 
United States in time. Men might well do 
nothing else, if they seek the industrial, po- 
litical, and moral welfare of the United 
States, except destroy the liquor traffic. 
Either it or America must eventually die. 
The generation just taking up the responsi- 
bility of citizenship must discern this need 
and meet it. 

Any reformer wih say that the evil he 
attacks is sufficient in itself to destroy our 
institutions and civilization. He speaks 
truly. Not one of those mentioned above 
has not in it the seeds of ruin. Yet I 



134 PROVIDENCR IN AMERICA. 

dare to urge, after following the course of 
our history, after meeting face to face in 
battle these dangerous demons, after dis- 
cerning the leadings from above, that God 
expects this people to meet this arni}^ of 
enemies and overwhelm it in eternal disas- 
ter, and that, by all their natural advan- 
tages, by the conflicts and activities of the 
present, he has prepared them for the strug- 
gle. The dangers of 1776 furnished the 
providential opportunity to establish a rep- 
resentative government. The presence and 
aggressiveness of slavery was the opportu- 
nity under God of freeing a race and giving 
an example to the world. The dangers of 
to-day furnish the opportunity to show that 
a Christian civilization and a representative 
government are equal to all tests. That 
God is leading America in this critical time 
is clear to him who notes, (i) The prepara- 
tion which America has had for this strug- 
gle. (2) The many wnse and brave leaders 
who see visions and dream dreams and in- 
terpret these to duller eyes. (3) The vast 
number of all ages and attainments who 
have responded to God's call to enlist in 
this campaign. In every community a 
heroic band from the rank and file are fol- 



PROVIDENCE IN ITS PRESENT PERILS. T35 

lowing the leaders. (4) The wide-spread 
discussion of these problems carried on in 
innumerable ways. Discussions, like thun- 
der storms, clear the social atmosphere. 
(5) The activity of the messengers of 
Christ. A host of heaven-inspired men 
are going into every corner of the 
land, to the poor, to the wncked, to the 
distressed, to capital and labor, to the young 
and the old — to all with their messages of 
love and their commands to righteousness. 
Never since the third century has the church 
been so clear as to its mission and so aroused 
to fulfil it. This appreciatior and deter- 
mination will deepen. The number of mes- 
sengers will increase, and each shall press 
his v/ay 

" To make the rugged places smooth, and 
sow the vales with grain; 

And bear, with liberty and law, the 
Bible in his train; 

The mighty v/est shall bless the east, 
and sea shall answer sea, 

And mountain unto mountain call, 
Praise Cod, jor zve are free.'''' 



My country ! 'tis of thee, 
Sweet land of liberty, 

Of tiiee I sing ! 
Land where my fathers died I 
Land of the pilgrims' pride ! 
From every mountain side 

Let freedom ring ! 

My native country, thee, 
Land of the noble free, 

Thy name I love ! 
I love thy rocks and rills, 
Thy woods and templed hills; 
My heart with rapture thrills 

Like that above. 

Let music swell the breeze, 
And ring from all the trees 

Sweet freedom's song : 
Let mortal tongue awake ; 
Let all that breathe partake ; 
Let rocks their silence break, 

The sound prolong. 

Our fathers' God ! to thee, 
Author of liberty, 

To thee we sing: 
Long may our land be bright 
With freedom's holy light; 
Protect us by thy might. 

Great God, our King. 

— Samuel Francis Smith, 



IX. 

WHAT DOES GOD EXPECT OF AMERICA ? 

As we have studied the different periods 
of America's history in these brief chapters, 
and noted the special care God has given 
our land, and as we have considered the 
ideals which are beckoning it on, we have 
had a growing appreciation of the purpose 
which God is working out here. The suc- 
cesses of the past have been in themselves 
great achievements. Men will always look 
back to the great epochs in our life, and 
with each added year will have a higher 
estimate of the importance of these strug- 
gles. Nothing since the coming of Christ 
will stand higher in the final judgment of 
history than the founding of a free nation 
and the freeing of a race. Why has God 
thus blessed us ? Such care and victories 
suggest a purpose. What is that purpose ? 

The different currents of influence, indus- 
trial, educational, moral, civil, and religious, 
of other ages and other worlds, united in 
America to form a democracy. No careful 
student can doubt that when the perfect 
nation shall exist it will be in fact, no 



WHAT DOES GOD EXPECT OF AMERICA ? 139 

matter by what name it is known, a gov- 
ernment of the people, for the people, by 
the people. To the accomplishment of this 
purpose has God used all the struggles of 
mankind. America's mission is seen when 
studied in this light. We have not yet 
realized our ideal. To realize that is our 
present and future task. 

I . We believe that God expects America 
to prove that the wisest laws and the high- 
est respect for authority can be only in a 
representative government. Such laws and 
respect are the basis of all true national 
life When such laws are passed and re- 
spected we have the perfect nation. Men 
urge that this can never be in a democracy. 
That democracy means lawlessness. That 
you cannot trust to the great mass of peo- 
ple that they are never able to govern 
themselves, that the few must govern the 
many. We recognize this danger, but we 
deny the conclusions. 

The same possibilities that, wrongly used, 
mean greatest lawlessness, rightly used, 
mean the highest respect for law. The 
ideal nation is not where the few are strong 
and capable and the many weak and unsafe, 
but where all have responsibilities and ap- 



140 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

predate and meet them. America stands 
before the world as an example of such an 
attempt at government. Other countries 
will or will not be assisted toward this end 
by the success or failure of our experiment. 
They already point to our misgoverned 
cities, to the corruption of politics, the wide 
extended strikes, the lynchings in the 
south, the riots in the north, the defiance 
of the saloons to all law, and to many other 
ominous things, as proof positive that the 
republican form of government, while it 
may be ideal, is practically impossible. Mr. 
Bryce questions: "The future of the 
United States during the next half century 
sometimes presents itself to the mind as a 
struggle between two forces, the one benefi- 
cent, the other malign ; the one striving to 
speed the nation on to a port of safety be- 
fore this time of trial arrives, the other to 
retard its progress, so that the tempest 
may be upon it before the port is reached. 
And the question to which one reverts in 
musing on the phenomena of American pol- 
itics is this : Will the progress now dis- 
cernible toward a wiser public opinion and 
a higher standard of public life succeed in 
bringing the mass of the people up to the 



WHAT DOES GOD EXPECT OF AMERICA. 141 

level of what are now the best districts in 
the country before the days of pressure are 
at hand? Or will existing evils prove so 
obstinate, and European immigration so 
continue to depress the average of intelli- 
gence and patriotism among the voters, 
that, when the struggle for life grows far 
harder than it now is, the masses will 
yield to the temptation to abuse their 
power, and will seek violent, and because 
violent probably vain and useless, remedies 
for the evils which will afflict them ? ' ' 

It is America's great work to prove that 
the safest council is found in the united 
judgment of a people, and the strongest 
authority where the greatest trusts are 
imposed. Democracy's king is law — the 
will of the people. It may endure all other 
evils and still live, so long as its king is 
supported. It is already dead when its 
king has no authority. Drunkenness and 
immorality and other evils are destructive 
enemies of a nation, but lawlessness is a 
nation's satan. Lawlessness in its last 
analysis is treason. At one time it fires 
upon Fort Sumter, at another it defies the 
laws of the land. Each saloon keeper or 
other evil disposed person who persistently 



142 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

disobeys good laws, is a traitor. Such a 
rebellion must be put down, or destruction 
awaits the nation. He who studies the 
indications of to-day must realize that God 
is calling America to put down all such 
lawlessness, and to prove that the best king 
is the will of the people. Already the work 
has commenced. What has been done in 
New York has been repeated on some scale 
in unnumbered localities. There may be 
temporary defeats, but we shall never see 
our cities given over without protest to 
corruption and disorder. It took a long 
time to arouse the conscience of America 
against slavery. Compromise after com- 
promise was made, and good men grew dis- 
heartened, but at last the hour of settle- 
ment came, and the people arose, and slav- 
ery was forever buried. The king demo- 
cracy is long in arousing to the demands 
that are made upon him, but the awakening 
comes, and it is omnipotent. Mr. Bryce, 
speaking of America's power to meet pres- 
ent emergencies, says: "To judge of 
America rightly the observer must not fix 
his eyes simply upon her present condition, 
seeking to strike a balance between the evil 
and the good that now appear. He must 



WHAT DOEvS GOD EXPECT OF AMERICA ^ I45 

look back at what the best citizens and the 
most judicious strangers perceived and re- 
corded fifty, thirty, twenty years ago, and 
ask whether the shadows these men saw 
were not darker than those of to-day, 
whether the forecasts of evil they were 
forced to form have not in many cases been 
belied by the event. De Tocqueville was a 
sympathetic as well as penetrating observer. 
Many of the evils he saw, and w^hich he 
thought were inherent and incurable, have 
now all but vanished. Other evils have 
indeed revealed themselves which he did 
not discern, but these may prove as tran- 
sient as those with which he affrighted 
European readers in 1834." 

To accomplish this purpose special duties 
devolve upon all. Each teacher and minis- 
ter, each man and woman, has his part in 
this work. Our schools must instruct their 
pupils in patriotism. They should teach 
no less of arithmetic and grammar, but 
more of Americanism. In the school and 
in the home the young should be taught to 
obey. Many a criminal that preys upon 
society in the circle of business or morals or 
politics learns his first lesson of disobedi- 
ence in the home and the school. The min- 



144 PROVIDENCE IN AAIERICA. 

ister has here a great opportunity. In his 
pulpit he has a throne of power unequaled 
by any other person in his community. His 
utterances must be wise, but must be 
direct against public evils and for a stronger 
patriotism. The church should have fre- 
quent services, the aim of which is the cul- 
tivation of patriotism. I^et the children 
sing those great national hymns that so stir 
the soul. Gradually will the public spirit 
be aroused and enlightened. The parent 
in the home should explain the significance 
of the great and interesting struggles of the 
past, and should teach his children that it 
is their duty and privilege to oppose every- 
thing that threatens our nation and to favor 
everything that strengthens it. Each citi- 
zen should be willing to run the risk of 
persecution and financial loss to support 
those principles upon whose triumph de- 
pends the nation's future. Agitation is 
the secret of success in arousing its public 
conscience. Anything is better than indif- 
ference. Public patriotic services of one 
good earnest church will work a revolution 
in a surprisingly brief time in the thought 
and courage of good citizens. God expects 
every American to do his duty. A cow- 



WHAT DOES GOD EXPECT OF AMERICA? 1 45 

ardly American is a contradiction of terms. 
It should be a contradiction in fact. The 
first step in the solution of every other 
moral problem is the enforcement of law. 
A lawless people can never be made a 
prosperous people. 

2. We believe that God expects America 
to prove that the highest intelligence can be 
only in a representative government. • In 
proportion as men think for themselves and 
have responsibilities which they must meet 
will they be intelligent. Responsibility is 
the surest teacher. The town meeting of 
New England did as much to make its citi- 
zens thoughtful and earnest as the schools 
upon which she so persistently insisted. 
The perfect nation will be composed of citi- 
zens each one of whom is wise in his 
understanding of the problems that require 
solution and in the adaptation of means to 
this end. Two theories divide the world. 
The one, that this intelligence can never be 
among the great mass of people ; that the 
safety of every nation is found in the intel- 
ligence of the few ; that to put the responsi- 
bility of considering and solving a nation's 
problems into the hands of the public is 
like putting a loaded gun into the hands of 



146 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

a company of children. The other, that it 
is never safe to trUvSt the solution of prob- 
lems to the intelligence and honesty of the 
few ; that to the people at large we must 
look for the highest wisdom and the surest 
character. 

We claim that history is a succession of 
proofs of the truth of this last position. 
May, in his " Constitutional History of Eng- 
land," says, "Among the measures most 
conducive to the moral and social improve- 
ment of the people has been the promo- 
tion of popular education. That our an- 
cestors were not insensible to the value of 
extended education is attested by the 
grammar schools and free or charity schools 
in England, and by the parochial schools of 
Scotland. 

"To the general education of the people, 
however, there was not only indifference 
but repugnance. The elevation of the 
lower grades of society was dreaded, as 
dangerous to the state. Such instruction 
as impressed them with the duty of con- 
tentment and obedience might be well ; but 
education which should raise their intelli- 
gence and encourage freedom of thought 
would promote democracy if not revolu- 



WHAT DOES GOD EXPECT OF AMERICA ? 147 

tion. It was right that the children of the 
poor should be taught the church catechism ; 
it was wrong that they should learn to read 
newspapers. So long as this feeling pre- 
vailed it was vain to hope for any system- 
atic extension of secular education ; but 
the church and other religious bodies were 
exerting themselves earnestly in their 
proper sphere of instruction. In their 
schools religious teaching was the primary 
object ; but great advances were also made 
in the general education of the poor. 
Meanwhile, the increasing prosperity of the 
country was rapidly developing the inde- 
pendent education of the children of other 
classes, who needed no encouragement or 
assistance. As society advanced, it became 
more alive to the evils of ignorance ; and 
in a reformed Parliament the jealousy of 
popular education was speedily overcome. 

God expects America to prove that a 
free people is a thoughtful people, that it 
is safer to trust the interests of this world 
to the whole world than to an elect few. 
Whatever, then, can be used to make our 
citizens thoughtful should be insisted upon 
by our government. It should see to it 
that every person of school age is in attend- 



148 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

ance on our public schools. If sectarian 
schools take the place of public schools in 
the education of some, the government 
should see that such studies are taught and 
such principles urged as will train up pupils 
to an intelligent appreciation of the respon- 
sibilities of citizenship. Instruction in sec- 
tarianism should never be allowed to take 
the place of instruction in patriotism. Our 
schools should be nurseries of patriotism. 

The placing of the flag upon each school 
building is a step in the right direction. 
Days in memory of our nation's heroes 
and the principles for which they contend- 
ed should be observed with appropriate 
services. Teachers can arrange oratorical 
contests upon patriotic themes. Debating 
clubs should be organized among the young 
of a community, at whose meetings the dif- 
ferent problems of our land should be con- 
sidered. The dangers of a country are not 
all in the times of war, when great princi- 
ples speak through the loud voice of strife, 
but in times of peace, when principles are 
the same and the voice of appeal still and 
small. War makes men patriotic. The 
dangers of peace are inattention and indif- 
ference. Inattention and indifference beget 



WHAT DOES GOD EXPECT OP* AMERICA ? I49 

ignorance. Mr. Bryce says of the educa- 
tion of the people at large, "That the 
education of the masses is nevertheless a 
superficial education goes without saying. 
It is sufficient to enable them to think they 
know something about the great problems 
of politics ; insufficient to show them how 
little they know. The public elementary 
school gives everybody the key to knowl- 
edge in making reading and writing famil- 
iar, but it has not time to teach him how to 
use the key, whose use is, in fact, by the 
pressure of daily work, almost confined to 
the newspaper and the magazine. So we 
may say that, if the political education of 
the average American voter be compared 
with that of the average voter in Europe, 
it stands high; but if it be compared with 
the functions which the theory of the 
American government lays on him, which 
its spirit implies, which the methods of its 
party organization assume, its inadequacy 
is manifest. This observation, however, is 
not vSO much a reproach to the schools, 
which generally do what English schools 
omit — instruct the child in the principles of 
the constitution as a tribute to the highest 
of the ideal which the American conception 



I50 PROVIDEXCH IN AMERICA. 



of popular rule sets up." 

Our work, as we have said, is to realize 
this ideal of intelligence. Discussion in 
and out of our schools is what we urge. 
Agitation is an educator. Mill, in his 
essay on " Liberty," says that "man recti- 
fies his mistakes by discussion and experi- 
ence, or there must be discussion to show 
how' experience is to be interpreted. 
Wrong opinions and practices gradually 
yield to fact and argument, but facts and 
arguments, to produce any effect on the 
mind, must be brought before it." The 
discussions, religious, political, moral, and 
industrial, of pulpit and paper and street 
corner, by their boldness and bitterness 
sometimes startle us, but out of it all will 
come a higher intelligence and a stronger 
civilization. Let this discussion be in our 
schools, where the child will come to the 
consideration of public questions from the 
right point of view. The advances of lib- 
erty have not come down from the rulers, 
but up from the common people. The 
source of a nation's progress is the House 
of Commons, and not the House of Lords. 

3. We believe that God expects America 
to prove that the highest moral develop- 



WHAT DOES GOD EXPECT OK AMERICA ? 151 

ment can be only in a republic. God aims 
to develop not one person but every per- 
son. He looks not at hierarchies but at 
hearts. The ideal world is one in which 
the moral nature of each person in it is de- 
veloping along the path of good toward the 
best. That nation has the highest moral 
character which has the most citizens of mor- 
al strength. Such strength can only come 
where responsibilities are widely imposed. 
" Insulate and you destroy him," says Em- 
erson of man. The way to teach a child to 
swim is to put him into the water. The 
way to make a nation of swimmers is to put 
every child in. The way to develop the 
moral nature of the person is to put him 
into the sea of responsibilities. To make a 
nation of moral power is to put every citi- 
zen in. 

" Cast the bantling on the rocks, 

Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat ; 
Wintered with the hawk and fox, 
Power of speed be hands and feet." 

Every patriot of Revolutionary days was 
a moral giant. Many of them were moral 
babes when they left the complete oversight 
of Kmg George. The common burdens of 
those early days made giants out of babes. 



152 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

* ' What do 3^ou grow on these barren hills ? ' * 
was sneeringly asked of one of New Eng- 
land's great men. '* Men," was the man's 
great answer. Had New England been a 
despotism no such answer could have been 
truthfully given. A man's moral nature 
without responsibilities is like the spinal 
cord of a jumping jack, and a nation's only 
a multiplication of loose joints and tow 
strings. 

A republic furnishes all the conditions of 
development. It lays upon each citizen a 
common responsibility. It offers him an 
equal opportunity. The perfect w^orld 
which God is making is a spiritual kingdom 
of which Christ is the head ; but the visible 
government, which is an essential to its 
reahzation, is a representative one, a gov- 
ernment of the people, for the people, by 
the people. 

It is America's mission to realize here 
the moral development made possible by 
her form of government and to prove to the 
world that a republic is the ideal. The 
young must have, in addition to a vision of 
the new earth, a vision of themselves mak- 
ing the earth new. The undeveloped for- 
eigners, those unused to democratic citizen- 



WHAT DOES GOD EXPECT OF AMERICA ? I53 

ship and ideas, must be made into Ameri- 
cans in spirit and living. It takes 
something besides naturalization papers to 
do this. A vote only makes its possessor 
more dangerous, if he is dangerous. It is 
putting a knife into the hand of an avSsassin. 
Two things must be done if God's expec- 
tations of America's moral development 
shall be realized. First, all evils must be 
destroyed. The saloon, the brothel, the 
gambling den, and other vices, as institu- 
tions in a community, must go. Their 
direct results work incalculable injury. 
But their very existence by license or indif- 
ference is enervating on the conscience. 
Worse even than the victims of the mad 
dog's bite would be an understanding and 
conscience that would accept as a matter of 
course the life of the maddened brute, or a 
fear that would silence all cries of warning 
and all efforts to kill. God expects the 
generation just taking up its work to wipe 
these institutions of vice from the face of 
the earth. I do not say that another thirty 
years will do away with all drunkenness, 
immorality, and vice, but I do believe this, 
that God is calling America to rid this land 
of the existence of such places by law or 



154 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

sufferance. The difference between the in- 
fluence of an evil that lives only in caves 
and drrkness and is pursued by law, and of 
the same evil when it openly and perhaps 
legally plies its trade, is almost infinite. 
With this work accomplished, the forces 
that tend to destroy manhood and w^oman- 
hood will be minimized. With the weeds 
uprooted the good seed can grow. The 
moral development of America can then be 
accomplished. 

Second, all good citizens must rally to 
the destruction of these evils. This in it- 
self will influence the young to enlist on the 
side of God and home and native land. 
The reason why so many of the young are 
walking the ways of darkness is because 
there has been no line clearly drawn. Let 
the issjue be made clearly and bravely, and 
there can be no doubt as to the final out- 
come. Lundy and Garrison, hooted and 
imprisoned for truth's sake, mean Phil- 
lipses, Sumners, and Lincolns in every ward 
and hamlet. These mean, at last, a public 
conscience, an organized effort, and slavery 
dead and buried too deep for resurrection. 
The best moral teacher is manhood battling 
for the truth. 



WHAT DOES GOD EXPECT OF AMERICA ? I55 

, ' What constitutes a state ? 

Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, 

Thick wall or moated gate ; 
Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned ; 

No — men, high-minded men, 
With powers as high above dull brutes imbued 

In forest, brake, or den 
As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude ; 

Men who their duties know, 
But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain, 

Prevent the long-aimed blow, 
And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain — 

These constitute a state. ' ' 

4. We believe that God expects America 
to prove that the most perfect brotherhood 
can be only in a republic. A brotherhood 
has been the Utopia of men's dreams. 
From Plato to to-day the dreamers have 
seen a society of perfect laws and life. 
Some have mapped out extensive plans for 
its realization, still has it come slowly. 
The conditions for such a desired state are 
not mechanical but spiritual. There must 
be a oneness of spirit before there will be a 
unity of life. Man's way is to try to make 
a brotherhood by force ; God's way is to 
make men one in motive and aim. Man 
tells us that armies alone can keep peace 
between men ; God tells us that love is the 
only solvent of men's hates and strifes. 



156 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

Complete love to God and perfect love for 
one's neighbor are the conditions Christ 
lays down. With this spirit there will be a 
considerate regard for all the rights of every 
nation. It is not dependent upon equality 
of w^calth or education, or upon force, but 
upon motive. The discussions and teach- 
ing of to-day are pressing home this truth. 
These and the struggles between races and 
classes indicate that God is calling upon 
this generation to solve the problem of 
brotherhood. Our republic is in form a 
brotherhood. It has, therefore, the best 
opportunity to realize in itself the ideal of 
Christ and the prophets of all ages. Its 
present mission, then, is to bring the reign 
of love in the hearts of its citizens and in 
all the relationships of men. The task is 
thick with difhculties. Capital and labor 
threaten each other. The white race, 
north or south, has not yet seen in the 
black man a brother, but looks at him as an 
inferior creature, now free, once in slavery. 
A chasm wide and yawning separates the 
Roman Catholic and the Protestant. To 
unite all hearts and to show that the inter- 
ests of all are one ; to eject trusts and to 
usher in trust ; to overthrow the reign of 



WHAT DOES GOD EXPECT OF AMERICA ? 157 

moneyhood aud to establish the rule of 
manhood ; to pass the laws of justice and to 
repeal the "law of just us ; " to make the 
measure of individual and communal life 
the standard of the Almighty and not the 
iron rule of the mighty, is the work of the 
present and future. There is a sense in 
which these problems are never solved. 
' ' The struggle of mankind upward "is an 
everlasting one. The victory of to-day 
brings man face to face with the struggle of 
to-morrow. But in another sense our part 
of the problems is solvable. ' ' We want a 
more cordial personal gelation between the 
employees and the employed ; we ask for a 
more righteous distribution of wealth ; we 
seek to make indolence and overwork 
equally impossible ; toil ought to be fully 
rewarded ; the law^ should protect the 
honest man against dishonest competition; 
the state should save from individual rapa- 
city whatever pertains to the necessities and 
interests of the whole community;" it 
should give to all races equal privileges in 
law and life; in a word, it should learn the 
meaning of neighbor as Christ understood 
it and illustrated it. To do this each pub. 
lie teacher and every Christian must press 



158 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

home by teaching and practice the laws of 
responsibility and love. Let the pulpit 
urge the laws and spirit of the kingdom 
upon all with the plainness of the prophets 
and the tenderness of the Christ ; let 
the Christian business man set the example 
of honest getting and beneficent spending ; 
let every follower learn by experience that 
it is more blessed to give of love, life, 
money, all things, than to receive ; and then 
let the legislator incarnate this spirit into 
laws, and one step in the ' ' struggle of 
mankind upward" is accomplished. In 
proportion as the ministry and laity are 
true to this demand will the task of the 
present be performed. 

" Finally, be ye all of one mind, having 
compassion one of another, love as breth- 
ren, be pitiful, be courteous ; not rendering 
evil for evil, or railing for railing ; but con- 
trariwise blessing, knowing that ye are 
thereunto called, that ye should inherit a 
blessing. ' ' 

" Through the harsh noises of our day 

A low, sweet prelude finds its way ; 

Through clouds of doubt and creeds of fear, 

A light is breaking calm and clear. 

That song of love, now low and far, 

Ere long shall swell from star to star ; 

That light, the breaking da}^ which tips 

The golden-spired apocalypse." 



Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the 

Lord ; 
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes 

of wrath are stored ; 
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible 

swift sword, 

His truth is marching on. 

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred 

circling camps ; 
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews 

and damps ; 
I can see his righteous sentence by the dim and 

flaring lamps. 

His day is marching on. 

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall neve^ 
call retreat ; 

He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judg- 
ment seat ; 

O be swift, my soul, to answer him ! be jubilant, 
my feet ! 

Our God is marching on. 

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across 

the sea, 
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and 

me ; 
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make 
men free. 

While God is marching on. 

— Julia Ward Howe. 



X. 

THE CHURCH AND AMERICA'S FUTURE. 

I mean by the church all true followers 
of Jesus Christ. These are banded together 
in visible organizations for worship and 
work. With them are associated others, in 
number unknown, in whose hearts the Christ 
has never been enthroned. This is by ne- 
cessity. In the visible church as well as in 
the world the wheat and the tares grow to- 
gether. Upon these visible organizations 
and back through them upon the real dis- 
ciples of Christ rests America's future. 
This is the lesson of the Christian centuries. 

Christ established his kingdom in the 
hearts of those who obeyed him and called 
this spiritual brotherhood his church. He 
laid upon them the salvation and perfection 
of the world. Around them gathered 
others, some of them selfish in heart, of ty- 
rannical spirit and worldly lives. That 
which men have called the church has often 
become corrupt and oppressive. But al- 
ways within its number have been those 
who saw the new heaven and worked for the 
new earth. They lifted their voices in con- 



l62 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

demnation and exhortation. They were 
greeted with a babel of sneers and curses. 
But upon them the future rested. God 
honored their fidelity. The future was won 
for him. Christ's followers have been to 
the world both its salt and light — perserv- 
ing all that was good in it, and adding little 
by little as men would respond that which 
it lacked. A field with a toothless harrow 
to cultivate it and no one to sow the good 
seed would be the world without the follow- 
ers of Christ. Open your histories and 
pass your pen through the names of its 
heroes who were Christ-inspired men. 
There is left a record of oppression, igno- 
rance, and shame. The lesson of universal 
history is America's lesson. Who laid the 
foundations of our nation ? Who accom- 
plished its independence ? Who formed the 
constitution ? Who freed its slaves ? 

Infidelity never discovered a continent, 
never launched a Mayflower', never founded 
a free republic, never freed a slave. No so- 
ciety of free thought can save America to- 
day from the ravages of its evils or make 
one in heart its discordant and dangerous 
elements or inspire it to struggle upward to- 
ward its ideals. O church of Christ, you 



THE CHURCH AND AMERICA'S FUTURE- I63 

who share in Christ's sufferings and work, 
if America is saved you must save it. Your 
Christ, your faith, your godliness, your 
self-sacrifice, your courage and endurance, 
your CvStimate of manhood, denunciation of 
evil, and expectation of victory are its only 
hope. 

I. The accountability of the church for 
certain dangerous conditions. 

Mr. Moody once remarked, "The gulf 
between the church and the masses is grow- 
ing deeper, wider, and darker every hour." 
According to the census of 1890 the in- 
crease in our population during the preced- 
ing decade was a little less than 25 percent. 
The churches during that time show a net 
increase of about 35 per cent, a gain of 10 
per cent over the population. In 1800 the 
evangelical communicants in the United 
States were 7 per cent of the population. 
In 1880 they numbered 20.07 P^^ cent, and 
in 1890 21.42. As Dr. Strong points out, 
this does not prove that the proportion of 
the church-going population has increased' 
nor that it has not decreased. In a city of 
Ohio whose population numbers about 20,- 
000, by a careful estimate it is found that 
not over 10,000 are occasional attendants at 



l(:4 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

church. In a township in one of the most 
intelligent counties of Ohio the writer finds 
that not over one-third of the population 
attends the services of the church. These 
are not exceptional cases. The wTiter has 
been permitted to visit many communities 
in different parts of the United States, and 
has been astounded to find that the major- 
ity of the people in the United States are 
not attendants at the churches. 

Others have come to the same conclusion. 
Rev. A. H. Bradford reported at a meeting 
of the Inter-denominational Congress that 
investigations in many of the larger cities 
of the country have proved that the num- 
ber of the poorer classes who are separated 
from the church is very large and rapidly 
increasing. At the same congress Dr. 
Washington Gladden reported that only 
about one-tenth of the families on his church 
list belonged to the working class. Dr. 
Strong gives page after page in ' ' The New 
Era " of such startling statistics, and con- 
cludes ' ' that less than 30 per cent of our 
population are regular attendants upon 
church, that perhaps 20 per cent are irregu- 
lar attendants, while fully one-half of the 
people of the United States, or more than 



THE CHURCH AND AMERICA'S FUTURE. 165 

32,000,000, never attend any church ser- 
vices, Protestant or Roman Catholic. " Two 
ominous things are suggested in this study. 
The churches of our rural communities that 
have furnished so large a per cent of our 
leaders in every undertaking are in many 
cases dying out. These communities are 
left then without any religious service. The 
result of this change cannot be calculated. 
Then another fact noticed in our cities, the 
up-town movement of our churches. Large 
down-town districts are left without any re- 
ligious service unless it be that of a rescue 
mission. There has been until recently a 
lack of any effort on the part of the church 
to meet the needs of these districts. These 
are the plague spots of our civilization. I 
have found in such parts of different cities 
many who know no more about Christ than 
the degraded savage in Africa. They are 
growing up without conscience or vision, to 
fill our prisons and attack our institutions. 
The church has failed to reach the down- 
town population. 

Another fact faces us. The young men 
are not members of the church or engaged 
in Christ's work. I have investigated this 
in nearly all of the large cities of the United 



l66 PROVIDENXE IN AMERICA. 

States by finding out the proportion of 
young men in those churches that are most 
successful in reaching this part of our pop- 
ulation. I am compelled to say that I do 
not believe that on an average over one- 
tenth of the active workers of our churches 
are young men under twenty-four years of 
age. When you add to this the terrible 
facts mentioned in Chapter IX. we can par- 
tially appreciate the bearing it has upon the 
future. The church has failed to reach the 
young men. 

The study of denominational year books 
brings its lessons. It tells of churches of 
large membership that have spent their 
thousands for local church expenses and 
have added by the year's work sometimes 
as few as seven on confession of faith. 
Take the leading denominations, those most 
zealous in Christ's work, and how few they 
reach during a given period of time. Many 
churches are successful here, and we need to 
bear in mind that figures are not a sure- 
test of a church's work. But no one can 
study this phase of the problem without 
concluding that the church of Christ which 
is sent out into the highways and hedges to 
compel the people to come in is not most ef- 



THE CHURCH AND AMERICA'S FUTURE- 167 

fective in accomplishing this in the United 
States. 

The church has failed to minister to all 
the needs of its members. The theory of 
the church has been that its work of minis- 
try has been to the soul of a man. It has 
sought to guide him in his religious life but 
not in his mental and social life. It has had 
its service on the Lord's day and once or 
twice during the week, and left him to seek 
elsewhere his associations and companion- 
ships for the remainder of the week. He 
has organized clubs to meet this need. 
Lodges have sprung up to gratify this de- 
sire for companionship and to minister to 
him and his household in times of sickness 
and disaster. Charity organizations have 
come and done a worthy work. The Young 
Men's Christian Association and kindred 
organizations have sought to direct the 
young man in social and intellectual ways 
and to vAn him to Christ. These all indi- 
cate a failure of the church. All such or- 
ganizations ought never to have been need- 
ed. The church should have furnished the 
young with healthful amusements and ele- 
vating associations. It is an indication of 
the vicious division which we have made in 



l68 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

life, holding one thing sacred and the other 
secular. Christ has to do with all life, with 
life in all its relationships. Had the church 
thus applied the gospel many of the dan- 
gers which threaten our country to-day 
would never have come. The religion of 
Christ excels all others and proves its divin- 
ity by its revelation of God, of man, and of 
society. The church has dwelt not too 
much upon the first, but too little upon the 
second and third. 

The church has erred in magnifying the 
ecclesiastical and theological idea, and min- 
imizing the idea of the kingdom. We are 
suffering from the accumulated debris of the 
ages. I would not underestimate printed 
creeds or the value of church membership ; 
but who can read the history of the church 
since the beginning of the fourth century 
and not be shamed by the truth of this 
statement. Councils have outlined a long 
list of statements and have made it essential 
to church membership to assent to these 
formulas. Denominations have wasted 
strength and time often in heated dispute, 
discussing non-essentials. The discussion 
from the third century to the beginning of 
this generation centered not about Christ- 



The church and America's future. 169 

like living, but around theology. The Ro- 
man church has always held that it is quite 
a necessity to salvation to be a member of 
its communion, and that such membership 
will insure final salvation. It sometimes 
admits that through ignorance and by the 
great mercy of God some outside will re- 
ceive eternal life. Other state churches 
have occupied practically the same position. 
In this country two other denominations 
numbering upwards of two millions of com- 
municants recognize in no other organiza- 
tions, except each in its own, a church of 
Christ. 

Thousands of persons who have come un- 
der the influence of such an exaggerated 
idea have confounded it with the religion of 
Christ. When they have come to see that 
mere church membership is not salvation 
they reject this and think they are rejecting 
Christ. Other denominations have not been 
free from this in some form. I remember 
hearing in my childhood a denominational 
leader say that all who have not obeyed a 
certain rite of his particular church would 
perish. In my work as a minister I meet 
very many who think that to be a Christian 
-one must simply obey certain formulas. 



170 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

They see that these vary indifferent denom- 
inations and in their misunderstanding they 
become agnostics or unbelievers. 

Washington Gladden pointedly says, 
"Any attempt to restrict his salvation to 
those interests which are expressed by the 
church as an ecclesiasticism is mischievous 
in the extreme. When you have fenced re- 
ligion off into a separate realm you have not 
only robbed society of the only power that 
can keep it from putrefaction, you have 
doomed religion itself to paralysis and 
death." ' 

Had the church spent its time and 
thought in teaching and applying the prin- 
ciples of the kingdom of God, there would 
be to-day no such separation of the masses. 
and the church. Many of the evils of so- 
ciety would have been overcome long ago 
if each minister had taught and each Chris- 
tian had lived the gospel of the kingdom. 
Suppose councils and church conferences 
had insisted simply upon loyalty to the Son 
of God and to the Scriptures as the only 
rule of faith and practice, and had spent 
their time and wisdom in planning their 
work, and the local churches, instead of 

1 "Ruling Ide of tho Present Age," p. 109. 



THE CHURCH AND AMERICA'S FUTURE. 171 

looking with hatred and suspicion upon 
each other, had united in an eff )rttoridthe 
community of its evils, think you that the 
forces of evil v/ould be in possession of any 
city or hamlet of this land? To have a 
creed is one thing, but to insist in the re- 
lationships of worsh'p and service only up- 
on those things in the creed that are essen- 
tial is far better. 

The church has failed to utilize its power. 
Few of the members outside of those neces- 
sary to fill the official positions have been 
engaged in any definite work for Christ. 
The work of reaching the indifferent in the 
parish has devolved upon the minister. 
The laity as a whole have felt little respon- 
sibility except in time of special evangelistic 
effort for the accomplishment of the same. 
The ministry has borne the responsibility of 
the pulpit and the field. Several unfortu- 
nate results have come from this. Often 
the ministry has failed to attempt it. 
Many parts of the community where ser- 
vices might have been held have been neg- 
lected. Many homes that might have been 
visited and Imndrcds of souls to whom the 
message of life might have been brought 
have never been approached. The theory 



172 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

on the part of some churches that only an 
ordained man can teach and exhort and the 
failure of other churches to use those upon 
whom councils have not laid their hands 
are accountable for many waste places to- 
day. We do not attack church shibboleths. 
We simply state results. Many communi- 
ties might have had its Moody or its Spur- 
geon had the churches thought more of 
souls and civilization than of denomina- 
tional order. 

2. The v/ay in which the church may 
shape the future. 

Its work may be outlined in a sentence as 
conversion of the soul, ministry to the whole 
man, and the regeneration of the whole com- 
munity. 

The Son of man came to seek and to save 
that which was lost. He could have ac- 
complished his purpose in no other way. 
He commenced at the heart and worked out. 
In no other way could the soul have been 
saved and its earthly life given to Christ- 
like ministries and the community re- 
claimed. Portions of the church need to be 
reminded of this to-day. We must not be 
silent, or in our great interest in education 
permit the community to overlook the fun- 



THE CHURCH AND AMERICA'S FUTURE. 173 

damental thing in the gospel of Christ — 
submission to the will of God. The great 
work of the church now as ever is the win- 
ning of the lost to Christ. The place to be- 
gin the purification of society is in the 
heart of each person. 

When this is done we must remember 
that the work is just begun. He is saved 
but not perfected. He must be made an in- 
telligent Christian. He must be guided in- 
to the possession of the Christian graces. 
No part of his nature is to be left to find its 
satisfaction and development in the world. 
The gospel is to be the sunshine and the 
rain that through the atmosphere of the 
church shall come to him to strengthen 
his whole nature and to make him 
a fruitful plant. This is to be accom- 
plished not by centering his thought and 
effort upon himself, but upon his responsi- 
bility to others and the community. Christ 
died to save the life as well as the soul, and 
life is saved in spending it in service. 
Theoretically the church understands that 
its great work is to minister to persons. It 
needs now to see that one part of its service 
is to the community. Its work is the per- 
fection of the entire life of the community.. 



174 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

It is not a pleasant task. It must press its 
way into dangerous and filthy corners. It 
must run the danger of slander and the 
knife of the assassin. It must expect the 
derision of the daily press and the hooting 
of mobs. These will be the spurs and music 
which shall accompany its work. But it 
cannot turn back if it would obey the call 
of God and heed this country's cry of need. 
A failure to do this means the ruin of 
America and the overthrow of the church. 
Fidelity to this task means a strengthened 
nation and a triumphant church. 

The message of the church in view of 
this work is easily found. The great posi- 
tive doctrines upon which all evangelical 
churches agree, and which have given shape 
to our life must be proclaimed with the 
same earnestness and confidence as of old. 
No negative or destructive message can save 
a nation. The old doctrines need to find a 
new tongue suited to the conditions of the 
time and clothed in the language of the 
nineteenth century, but none the less clear 
in its utterance and positive in its demands. 
Sin, whose heart is unbelief, needs to be 
shown in all its hideousness as the execu- 
tioner of Christ and the destroyer of souls 



THE CHURCH AND AMERICA'S FUTURE. I75. 

and communities. All have sinned and 
come short of the glory of God. The wages 
of sin is death. 

Then call upon all men to repent and be- 
lieve in the Lord Jesus Christ with the same 
earnestness of spirit as the preachers of old. 
" Let the wicked forsake his way, and the 
unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him 
return unto the Lord, and he will have 
mercy upon him ; and to our God, for he will 
abundantly pardon." So present all the 
great messages of the word. Not preach- 
ing about them, but preaching them. The 
danger in an age as critical and restless as 
this is that we shall spend too much of our 
time in the pulpit in the discussion of the 
Bible's language, authorship, the theories 
about it, and other questions that have their 
proper place, and shall not present the great 
truths of the Bible, and upon these base our 
appeals to men. Mr. Spurgeon and Dr. A. J. 
Gordon are illustrations of positive preach- 
ing. Take out of their messages the ever 
present appeal to the Scriptures, and you 
rob their lives of half their fruitage. There 
must be scholars, and every minister must 
understand the thought of his day and meet 
the error and adapt himself to the new 



176 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

truth and guide the thought of his people, 
but to accomplish this he need spend little 
time in purely critical preaching. If he 
would reach the indifferent, win the young, 
and set them at work to destroy the evils 
that threaten America, and have his part in 
the evangelization of the world, he has lit- 
tle time for other than the most positive 
work. There are other places than the pul- 
pit where as necessity demands and wis- 
dom indicates he can instruct his people in 
these things. I am convinced also that the 
minister will develop his church in intelli- 
gence as well as in Christian earnestness 
only in this way. The man who shapes 
his creed from the point of view of the lost 
sheep will have a truer one than the man 
who forms it by the rules of logic and criti- 
cism. 

His message to the community must 
likewise be positive. The minister is a 
prophet. His voice, though it be alone in 
its warning, must be lifted in denunciation 
of those evils that feed upon society's life. 
He must not rant, he must condemn. The 
truths of the Bible, like the stones of ancient 
warfare, must be hurled at the fortifications 
of the wicked. Even here he must guard 



THE CHURCH AND AMERICA'S FUTURE. 177 

well. He may simply be destructive and 
fail. His message must call to a construc- 
tive work. He must inspire men to believe 
that there is no such thing as permanent 
evil. He must call upon his followers to 
destroy the bad for the sake of establishing 
the good. This makes the Christian's work 
heroic. This will draw around him the 
noblest and bravest souls of his parish and 
command the respect of the young to the 
church. Dr. Parkhurst and others like 
him have inspired a profound respect in the 
hearts of the people at large for the minis- 
try and the church, and have caused the 
evil forces to tremble before the power of 
Christian conscience. This battle pressed 
in every community, if he who lesids does 
not scold but speaks as Christ did to the 
extortioners and hypocrites, will change 
whatever disrespect or criticism many have 
had for the church to a profound respect 
and hearty support. 

The method of the church must be per- 
sonal. The danger of late has been to 
trust too much in large gatherings and res- 
olutions. The farmer attends his conven- 
tion and receives there new inspiration and 
new methods, but the results will depend 



178 providence: in AMERICA. 

Upon his personal efforts during the follow- 
ing months. History records that the 
marvelous growth of the church during the 
first three centuries of its life and under its 
bitter persecution was because each follower 
of Christ told his message to each person he 
met. Let the personal method return to- 
day and the results would be immediate and 
marked. Let each member say "Come," 
and let him bear his part in the opposition 
to vice and oppression, and there would soo'n 
be no such question as, ' ' How to reach the 
masses ? ' ' The church has been too much 
like an army in which the general does all 
the fighting. The army where each sol- 
dier appreciates what is at stake and with 
sublime courage does his part knows no 
such thing as failure. 

3. Application of these truths to a local 
church. The partial failure of a local 
church to reach the people of a community 
and to give shape to its public life has often 
come not from any lack of appreciation of 
its responsibility, but from an absence of 
tact. No general requires such great ele- 
ments of leadership as the pastor of a 
church. Many a minister has preached 
beyond criticism, has prayed and agonized 



THE CHURCH AND AMERICA'S FUTURE. I79 

over the lost and urged upon his people 
their responsibility to society and to indi- 
viduals' souls and has wondered and perhaps 
been heartbroken because his church did 
not respond and the community come to 
find life. He charges his failure to the in- 
difference of the members and the total 
depravity of those outside. Yet the church 
really wished to do this work, and many 
outside of its circle were waiting for only a 
word to bring them in. I believe there are 
a few simple conditions which if met will 
make each church successful in filling the 
place and accomplishing the work to which 
God calls it to-day. 

(i) Its services. We have been endeav- 
oring these many years to secure the at- 
tendance of the members of the church 
upon the morning and evening services of 
the Lord's day. We have succeeded in 
accomplishing this in the morning, but in the 
evening half-filled pews have stared us in 
the face and discouraged many a courageous 
heart. We have prepared the most elabor- 
ate musical programs, and sometimes have 
selected startling_,tliemes, and have lectured, 
when we were able, upon history and biog- 
raphy and art and sociology, and still the 



I So PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

bare pews remain, and they always will re- 
main so long as this method is followed. 
One service on Sunday distinctively for 
Christian people is enough. At this vSer- 
vice let the themes be such as apply to 
Christian growth and public questions. 
More naturally this would come in the 
morning. Make the distinct aim of the 
evening service the reaching of non-church- 
goers and the conversion of the lost. Call 
upon the church that you have instructed 
in the morning to prove your ministry and 
their faith by going out into the highways 
and hedges to find and bring in the indif- 
ferent. And when the hour of service 
comes make the most simple and attractive 
service that human skill and divine spirit 
can arrange. Let the people sing. Put 
into their hands the w^ords of familiar 
hymns. Let an enthusiastic leader insist 
that every person join in the service of 
song. Lay hands on the most effective 
gospel soloist that you can reach. Remem- 
ber that a violin in the hands of a skilful, 
consecrated Christian may be better than a 
card of invitation. Let the sermon be brief 
and upon some truth of the word that shall 
call upon every man to believe now in the 



THE CHURCH AND AMERICA'S FUTURH. iSl 

Son of God. Commence your service 
promptly and close it at the end of the 
hour. Gather up the fruits of the meeting 
in a simple, natural after-meeting. Direct 
your people so that each new-comer shall 
be welcomed and those under conviction 
shall be brought into the after-meeting. 
Wherever this has been persistently done 
vacant pews have been filled and rebellious 
souls won. The evening service is the an- 
swer to the question, ' ' How shall the masses 
be reached ? " 

One of the most effective ways in which 
to join the members of the church to the 
evening service is to put a service each 
month in charge of one of the organizations. 
Let the Sunday school furnish for its even- 
ing parts of the order of service an appro- 
priate recitation, song, a portion of Scrip- 
ture, a dialogue, and anything else that 
will assist in reaching the results aimed at. 
The pastor can control the service and 
preach his usual short and direct sermon. 
Such a service will interest not only the 
Sunday school, but will draw in many of 
the parents from those homes which are not 
connected with the church. If the service 
is hearty and inspiring some of them will 



1 82 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

become regular attendants. The next 
month let the brotherhood have charge of 
the evening service. Draft two or three 
young men and have them present in three- 
minute speeches the work of the brother- 
hood. Organize among their number, if 
possible, a quartette that wall furnish a 
stirring song or two. The pastor comes 
then with his sermon in which he appeals 
to young men t.i be Christians. In this 
way the different societies of the church 
can be used, and the congregation built up 
in numbers and interest. Three or four 
patriotic services during the year Li which 
stirring national hymns are sung by the 
congregation, as many temperance meet: 
ings with stirring appeals and music, bright 
missionary meetings— in these and other 
ways the evening service can be crowded 
and the great work of Christ made ef- 
fective. 

Another effective way is to hold services 
in different parts of the parish. This can 
be done during the week ; place this work 
in the hands of the young people. Go with 
them whenever it is possible and preach to 
those gathered. Visit all the homes of that 
vicinitv and invite them into the services. 



The churchan d America's future. 183 

Bring the fruits of this work into the home 
church. Whether these services in any 
part of the city shall be continued will de- 
pend upon the needs. Many will be reach- 
ed by only a few weeks of effort. 

(2) Its organization. Much depends 
upon this. Many Christians desire to do 
personal work but do not know how. 
The preaching that stops with an exhorta- 
tion may make itself ineffective. The min- 
ister must guide his people as he sends them 
forth. A church without organizations is 
like a business house where every employee 
is left to do as he has a mind. 

Each organization should aim at the ac- 
complishment of one of three purposes, 
the development of the members, the 
reaching of non-church goers, or the reform- 
ation of society. To accomplish the first 
purpose the pastor must be able to command 
the members. Much time is wasted in 
pastoral visitation, and many members be- 
come indifferent and fall away before the 
pastor knows the failing interest. Two 
plans seem to overcome this. Some have 
divided the church roll into equal parts and 
given each division into the charge of a dea- 
con. Others have divided the members 



I84 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

into companies of ten, making one of the 
company responsible for the nine. Still 
others have divided the members into 
groups according to location in the com- 
munity. Some plan like these will make 
the church manyfold more effective. 

Classes for the study of the Bible and its 
application in personal work are almost a 
necessity. Classes for the study of local 
social conditions will have a magic influ- 
ence in the development of the young peo- 
ple. Let it be the aim to give every mem- 
ber some special work to do. 

To reach the non-church goers: The 
aim should be to bring to each person in the 
community a per-onal invitation to attend 
the services, and to win as many as possible 
to accept Jesus Christ. Nothing is more 
effective among the young men than the 
Brotherhood of Andrew and Phillip. 
Gather those who are anxious to do this 
personal work into such an organization. 
Meet with them just preceding the morning 
service and outline the work for the day and 
the week, and then as they kneel about 
you let each pray for the services and for 
this work. Each one is pledged to do his 
best to bring some young man to at least 



THE CHURCH AND AMERICA'S FUTURE. 1S5 

one of the services of the week. Place in 
their hands printed invitations which will 
make it eas}/ for them to approach others. 
Send them out to the hotels on Sunday 
morning with a personal invitation to each 
one of the guests. Keep them busy at 
something, and during the year the results 
will be visible. If possible unite others in 
an effort to visit the homes of the commu- 
nity, so that during the year each home will 
have had the presence of an earnest Chris- 
tian life, and its members an invitation to the 
services. 

The organization of the church for the 
reformation of society is an important thing. 
The pastor can accomplish much by wisely 
directing his people. Organize those who 
are especially interested in temperance work 
into a committee or society that shall do 
this work. A committee not only to re- 
lieve the wants of the poor, but to study the 
whole question of relief, will lead to some- 
thing usually that will affect the community 
permanently. If the pastor is persistent 
and careful he can so arouse his people to a 
sense of responsibility that they will lead 
in organizing among the citizens a Good 
Government Club. A public kindergarten 



l86 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

has resulted in several places from a begin- 
ning made in a private v^^ay by the ladies of 
a church. 

If a place demands it a reading room 
should be kept open during the week. 
Games and other entertainment should be 
furnished the young. The church should 
so enter into the social needs of the 3^oung 
that they shall find their satisfaction in good 
surroundings and shall not be led into the 
ways of sin. In this way the percentage of 
young men in the church will grow larger 
each year. Classes in sewing, cooking, 
talks to the mothers on the care of the home 
and training of children, other instruction 
as necessary, will have their part in the 
evolution of the life of the community. 
These may seem like trifles and beneath the 
notice of a church, but, like the mustard 
seed, they have in them great possibilities. 

(3) Its power. I have recognized in other 
places the power of consecrated personalty 
and of the word of God. Each church has 
these to wield. But they must be vitalized 
and used by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit 
is promised to all believers and for all ser- 
vice. He coiivicts of sin. He gives cour- 
age* joy» peace, love, and power. Study 



THE CHURCH AND AMERICA'S FUTURE. 187 

the record in the Acts of the early church. 
Three thousand in a day,^ five thousand 
men," multitudes both of men and women, ^ 
a great company of the priests,^ a great 
multitude both of Jews and Greeks be- 
lieved,^ and the world was turned upside 
down.^ The church was filled with the 
Spirit for service. He led the Christians to 
their work, and gave them joy and victory 
in it. A Spirit-filled church will "reach 
the masses." There will be added daily to 
it such as are being saved. The evil forces 
of the world will hate it. Religious for- 
mality will sneer at it, and religious indiffer- 
ence will be jealous of its work; but the 
blessing of God will be upon it, and the 
multitudes will be saved and will become 
national saviours. 

I have given only the outline of the re- 
sponsibility and work of the church; the de- 
tails would fill a volume. I am only to sug- 
gest. The true pastor and church do not 
need ready-made plans, but a realization of 
their responsibility and a hint from the ex- 
perience of others. 

As at the commencement of this chapter, 

1 Acts 2:41. 2 Ibid. 4:4. 3 Ibid. Acts 5:14. 4 Ibid. 
^:7. 6 Ibid. 14:1. 6 Ibid. 17:6. 



l88 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

SO at its close, I urge that upon the church 
of Christ depends America's future. Its 
task is the bringing of Christ to the heart 
of man and society. The task and the 
leader should inspire us. Nothing is too 
great for those in whom he dwells and 
through whom he works. " All power in 
heaven and earth is given unto me," de- 
clared Christ of himself. The power that 
made him creator of the universe, that 
brought him to the earth and made him 
master over nature and disease, that made 
him equal to the trial of the cross and vic- 
torious over the power of the grave, are only 
suggestions in earthly, finite language of 
power that is infinite. ' ' Lo, I am with you 
alway," is the assurance of Christ to the 
church. Infinite power, then, is pledged to 
the church's w^ork. Upon this task we en- 
ter. To this power we look for strength. 
In his promises we find assurance of 
success. 



'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam. 
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home ! 
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us here, 
Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with 
elsewhere. 

Home ! home ! sweet, sweet home ! 1 1 

There's no place like home ! 

An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain ! 
O, give me my lowly, thatched cottage again ! 
The birds singing gaily that came at my call — 
Give me them ! and the peace of mind dearer 
than all ! 
Home ! home ! sweet, sweet home ! 
There's no place like home. 

—John Howai'd Payjie. 



XI. 

THE HOME AND AMERICA'S FUTURE. 

Of all the institutions that make up the 
strength of a nation the home stands with- 
out a rival. The first step in civilizing a 
people is to Christianize its homes. The 
church in any land depends upon its homes 
as the great means which Christ will use in 
extending his kingdom. Nationally and 
personally its influence is the most potent 
and lasting. 

A nation must look to its homes for citi- 
zens of strong and healthy bodies. Ten- 
dencies to disease are inherited. Food 
and sanitation are elements in the problem. 
Physical tendencies to dissipation or to 
sobriety are inherited, and are strengthened 
by the physical condition and early sur- 
roundings. 

A nation must look to its homes as well 
as to its schools for its intellectual condition. 
The fiber of the brain depends upon all the 
conditions of the home. The point of view 
from which the citizen looks at life and 
national problems is largely received here. 



I92 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

The ideas that shape the life come to the 
child from the father and mother. 

Many influences unite to form the moral 
condition of a country, but the home is the 
primary one. The same child, that, brought 
up in an American home, speaks English, 
would, if reared in an Italian or German 
family, speak the language of that country. 
The moral difference dependent upon the 
home is as wide. Moral fiber depends up- 
on prenatal conditions ; moral ideals and 
purposes upon childhood teachings and 
early moral atmosphere. The Puritan and 
Pilgrim settled the north, and the Cavalier 
the south. Study the moral history of our 
country with this in mind. 

The home plays an equally important 
part in the religious life of a nation. Hor- 
rible religious rites have been in vogue in 
heathen lands for centuries. They have 
come down from father to son. The 
heathen mother murders her babe ; when 
she becomes a Christian she loves it more 
than she does her own life. The mission- 
aries appreciate the importance of the home 
in their work, and the difficulty in winning 
those who have had a dark and terrible 
t/aiuing in childhood. The workers in the 



THE HOME AND AMERICA'S FUTURE. 193 

slums of civilized lands testify to the added 
difficulty in winning and holding those who 
have had no religious home training. Tests 
have been frequently made in large assem- 
blies of Christian leaders, and it has been 
found universally true that a large majority 
had early religious training in the home. 
Study the great, inspired leaders of history, 
and you will usually find a godly mother 
and often a household of faith. 

Thus upon its homes rests in large meas- 
ure the future of a country. Their influ- 
ence touches every part of national life, 
as the atmosphere touches every part 
of the earth's surface. They receive from 
the home more than from otherwhere the 
point of vi2w, the purpose, the affections, 
the ideals and the memories that shape life. 
The homes in America have in the past 
come near to the realization of their place 
in the nation's life. They have sent forth 
from their sacred circles citizens of physical, 
mental, moral, and religious vision and 
strength. They have accepted from God 
their mission and fulfilled it with devotion 
and power. The present and future look to 
them for leaders and followers. 

The student of American life, recognizing 



194 providence; in America. 

the place of the home, sees with deep con- 
cern the working of forces that will unless 
checked undermine this sacred institution. 
I. Wrong views of training and industry 
are too prevalent. In other days the chil- 
dren were taught to work. Many of them 
learned a trade. In the families of wealth 
industry was insisted upon. To-day in a 
multitude of homes the children are idle. 
Few of the boys in well-to-do homes are 
taught a trade. The work which the girls 
used to do is now done by servants. Out 
of twenty young women taking upon them- 
selves the responsibilities of a home recent- 
ly, fifteen knew nothing about the simplest 
duties of house keeping. The mental and 
moral results of idleness are evil. The 
young come to look at life from a wrong 
point of view. Idleness is often the way to 
dissipation. " Doing nothing is," says 
Crafts, ' ' an apprenticeship to doing 
wrong." Beecher declared, "If you are 
idle 3-ou are on your way to ruin, and there 
are few stopping-places upon it. It is rather 
a precipice than a road." 

' ' An idler is a watch that wants both hands, 
As useless if it goes as when it stands." 

Give the children an appreciation of the 



THE HOME AND AMERICA'S FUTURE. 195 

glory of work. Train them to be indus- 
trious. An industrious people will make a 
strong nation. 

2. Devitalizing habits. The use of nar- 
cotics is widely prevalent. We are a nation 
of tobacco users. While the number of 
total abstainers is increasing, still, the habit 
of moderate drinking is wide-spread. I find 
from consultation with druggists that the 
use of morphine and cocaine is on the in- 
crease.. The conclusions of science in re- 
gard to such habits may be briefly summa- 
rized, (i) A danger of physical, mental, 
and moral disease on the part of the one 
using. (2) A danger of giving to our off- 
spring a weakened or diseased body, an in- 
dolent mind, and a dull moral nature. I 
am personally convinced that the wide 
prevalence of the cigarette habit among the 
boys is in large measure the result of the 
use of tobacco on the part of the parent. 
Each person who seeks to relieve the woe of 
the world is acquainted with young men and 
women who are born with an appetite for 
drink, the result of a father's or mother's 
indulgence. I do not say that in a major- 
ity of cases these tendencies are inherited, 
but frequently it is true. The true parent 



196 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

takes no risk when such sacred interests are 
at stake. He is willing to forego even the 
things that do not injure him for the sake 
of his children. I venture the opinion that 
no one thing would so minister to the phys- 
ical, mental, and moral health and strength 
of the next generation as to have the pres- 
ent generation give up the use of tobacco 
and liquors. 

3. The increasing demand of clubs, 
lodges, and society upon the time of parents 
is a menace to our homes. Time is an es- 
sential element in the relationships of par- 
•ents and children. Home to many a man 
is a place in which to eat and sleep — a res- 
taurant and lodging house. Rev. Charles 
H. Small, in an address upon the home, in 
summing up the conclusions ot Lis careful 
investigations, gives this as one of the po- 
tent causes of the decay of family life. I 
have often found it true of Christian men 
that the regular engagements of business, 
of lodges, and of clubs leave them no even- 
ings of the week at home. Five women 
chosen at random from the leading Chris- 
tian women of a city had each on an 
average fourteen engagements of this kind 
every week ''during the season." There 



THE HOME AND AMERICA'S FUTURE. 197 

is no home life in such houses. The chil- 
dren must seek companionship elsewhere-- 
in the gaiety or the dissipation of societj^ 
Sud^ a hfe destroys in the parent the love 
for the home. Us associations seem dull. 
The power to appreciate its charms is de- 
stroved The saddest confession I ever 
Samothermahewasthis,"Icanno 

bear to spend an evening at home_ It is so 
dull • • She had come to enjoy the excite 
lent of club and cards more than the com- 
panionship of her children. 

. The absence of children from our best 
homes is a threatening evil. Every disrep- 
utable physician's hand is stained with 
b ood Every reputable physician turns 
away with horror from the f^^eciue^t^PPeal^ 

to commit murder. Many homes of which 
ILveisnottruearestillchillessro. 

deliberate and selfish purpose. It is le„al 

^irrSs^re destructive. It tends to 
destroy the love upon ^vhich the home rests 
Often U leads to divorce. It destroys h 
moral power of the home. The young tha 
7Z up to the duties of citizenship are too 
nany of them from the homes of igriora-e 
and ideas foreign to our principles and 



198 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

spirit. Unless disease or nature forbid, each 
home should be the training school of 
citizens. 

5. The absence of moral purpose iii the 
training of the home is another national 
danger. 

When the soldiers of General Gates de- 
stroyed the snow forts of the boys of Bos- 
ton they went before him and demanded 
justice. "The very children," said he, 
* * draw in a love of liberty with the air they 
breathe." The air that made them love 
liberty and bold to stand for it was the at- 
mosphere of the homes in which they lived. 
Fathers and mothers were patriots. They 
taught their children by precept and exam- 
ple that each one must champion the truth, 
and to this end God had given him life. In 
the days of our fathers the children were 
given in prayer to God before their birth. 
The parents looked forward to the time 
when their children should be engaged in 
some great work for God and man. The 
children from their homes came forth to be 
stalwart leaders and followers in the nation's 
hours of need. Unless I mistake, many of 
the homes of to-day are not filled with such 
a moral atmosphere. Parents hope for their 



THE HOME AND AMERICA'S FUTURE. 



199 



children a successful social or busmess 
career I fear that comparatively few are 
hoping and praying that their children .hall 
be faithful servants of God, and are tram^ 
ing them by precept and example to spend 
heir lives for others. God does not expec 
all to be missionaries-but not until a home 
is pervaded by this altruistic atmosphere 
.vill it fulfill its mission. In the truest 
sense, then, God expects every person to be a 
missionary in his consecration and se v ce^ 
6 This atmosphere cannot exist unless 
the home is distinctively religious. Around 
the family altar the children of early days 
received their impressions of the sacredness 
of life As they heard their parents pray 
for America they realized that its counse s 
were of eternal import. They learned there 
that the problems of their day had o do 

with heaven and earth, with the past and 
the future. In the consecrations the e 
made were the beginnings of many noble 

'T am therefore, concerned as I 
see the 'decay of the family altar. In 
gathering as best I could by personal obser- 
vation and consultation with pastors the 
present facts concerning this matter I am 



200 PROVIDENCfc: IX AMERICA. 

compelled to express the opinion that not 
half the homes in which one or both of 
the parents are members of a church have 
family worship or grace at the table. This 
accounts in no small measure for the world- 
liness and coldness in the churches and 
for the weak conscience in regard to pub- 
lic evils. I^et the nominally Christian 
homes have the family altar with its les- 
son from the word, its voices of prayer 
and songs of praise, and the generation 
coming from them will have the vision and 
strength to bring America nearer to the 
realization of its perfect ideals. 

I never realized so deeply the power of a 
Christian home as when wandering alone 
one night in a foreign land. All about was 
squalor and crime. I was asking myself if 
there is any means that Christ could use to 
reclaim such moral wastes. The sound of 
singing fell upon my ears and melted my 
heart. 

" Home ! home ! sweet, sweet home ! 
There's noplace hke home ! " 

There in the midst of desolation was a 
Christian home. Pictures brightened the 
walls. Carpets covered the narrow floors. 
Cleanliness had wrought its work well.. 



THE HOME AND AMERICA'S FUTURE. 201 

Purity dwelt there. The joy of Christ with 
its songs of hope was an inhabitant. Love 
touched it all with the glory of heaven. A 
Christian family had taken up its abode m 
this desert to reclaim it and make it m time 
the garden of the Lord. America has its 
countless numbers of such homes, and each 
one is a pledge of better things for the 
nation. 



others shall sing the song, 
Others shall right the wrong, 
Finish what I begin, 
And all I fail of win. 
What matter I or they, 
Mine or another's day. 
So the right word is said 

And life the sweeter made ? 

Hail to the coming singers ! 

Hail to the brave light-bringers ! 

Forward I reach and share 

All that they sing and dare. 

I feel the earth move sunward, 

I join the great march onward, 

And take by faith, while living, 
My freehold of thanksgiving. 

—John Greenleaf Whittier 



XII. 

AMERICA'S FUTURE ASSURED. 

In the preceding chapters we have glanced 
over the history of America. No nation in 
so brief a time has had lo eventful a career. 
Its short life has been full of great strug- 
gles. It was born in a time of great need. 
I^iberty and righteousness the world over 
must have a place in which to incarnate 
themselves in institutions, laws, life, and 
ideals. They had been chained for eleven 
centuries but now in the plan of God are to 
fight for the world's freedom without hin- 
drance of manacles. Persecution was used 
of God for the carrying out of his purpose, 
and the Pilgrim Fathers and other colonists 
came to the task of subduing a wild conti- 
nent and a wilder race of men. Disease 
joined hands with cold and poverty to de- 
stroy their work, but the power of the Om- 
nipotent was there and the foundations 
were laid deep and strong. Each genera- 
tion has faced enemies overwhelming in 
number and fierceness. The life of the 
country has often seemed about to be 
crushed out, but the impossible has always 



AMERICA'S FUTURE ASSURED. 205 

been doue and a victory recorded for free- 
dom. To-day more and fiercer enemies 
than ever threaten our hfe. Each one if 
looked at singly seems too much for any 
nation to overcome, and when taken collec- 
tively we do not wonder that some believe, 
with rough old Carlyle, that "the Ameri- 
can republic is going straight to the devil." 
We would not overestimate the dangers, 
neither would we underestimate them. 

Yet, in spite of all that threatens, I am 
confident as I look over the forces in battle 
array that those that are for us are more 
than those that be against us. It is our joy 
to point out in this chapter the causes of our 
confidence. 

I. This country in its present struggles 
has the assurance of history. The dullest 
student must see that history is only the 
record of the struggles of a few against the 
many and the victory at last of every just 
cause. A few men stand at the foot of a 
cross. They are unlettered fishermen. 
Their Leader is dying. Their task is to 
make universal a kingdom of which he is 
the head. Brothers are against them. 
Poverty is their treasure. Customs, ancient 
and cherished, are attacked by them. The 



2o6 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

civil power that has taken the life of their 
Leader will be wielded against them. Ec- 
clesiastical hatred is their strongest enemy. 
They go forth with no other ensign than a 
despised cross. Humanly estimated, they 
have not one possibility of success. They 
are sent to do the impossible. Still they 
go. They deliver their messaee. Gloomy 
prisons and burning fagots do not silence 
them. Men listen. Men respond. For 
centuries after they have laid down their 
Hves their cause sweeps on. Every vic- 
tory won for God or men since the disciples 
died is a victory for them. Men have mis- 
understood and refused their message and 
the battle is long drawn out, but each age 
has seen some portion of this fair world re- 
captured and brought under the rule of 
Jesus Christ, 

The lesson of Christ and his disciples is 
the lesson of every person and company of 
persons that have stood for truth. One man 
has faced a world. He has undertaken the 
impossible. He has done his best. His 
record is one of persecution and death but 
never defeat. God made the impossible 
possible. The victory seemed all the more 
brilliant and blessed because the beginning 



AMERICA'S FUTURK ASSURED. 20J 

was so discouraging and mean. Each 
struggle has been an impressive commentary 
of the psalmist's prophecy: "There shall 
be an handful of corn in the earth upon the 
top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall 
shake like Lebanon: and they of the city 
shall flourish like grass of the earth." ^ 

What is the lesson of Luther's life? In 
the beginning an impossible task, at the 
finish a world-shaping victory. Man's ex- 
tremity is God's opportunity. What word 
does Wesley sound down to us? At first 
persecution and threatening death, at last 
faith that includes in the church's thought 
works. 

Listen to the lesson of the modern mis- 
sionary movement. In the beginning a 
cobbler with a vision of an evangelized 
world. A cold and sneering church. To- 
day missionary societies without number, 
missionaries reaching the thousands, many 
churches self-supporting and more, the 
world's history richer by the heroic lives 
spent in this service, heaven ringing with 
voices that otherwise would not have known 
its songs, and a growing number of Chris- 
tians whose purpose is that the world shall 

IPs. 72:16. 



2oS I'ROVIDENCK IN AMERICA. 

be evangelized during this generation. It 
is the same old story. History has but one 
voice, victory for the truth. 

" By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding 

feet I track, 
ToiUng up new Calvaries ever with the cross that 

turns not back, 
And these mounts of anguish number how each 

generation learned 
One new word of that grand credo which in 

prophet hearts hath burned 
Since the first man stood God-conquered with his 

face to heaven upturned. 

" For humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the 
martyr stands 

On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in 
his hands ; 

Far in front the cross stands ready and the crack- 
ling fagots burn, 

While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe 
return 

To glean up the scattered ashes into history's 
golden urn." 

2. This country has the assurance of its 
own history. Institutions, like persons, take 
their bent in youth. Train up a child in 
the way he should go; and when he is old 
he will not depart from it. " As the twig 
is bent the tree is inclined." We have in 
this land the inspiration of a remarkable 



AMERICA'S FUTURE ASSURED. 209 

history. Our great struggles hrve been for 
great principles and have always been vic- 
torious. America's great men, those to 
whom we look back now, were good men. 
Men who counted not their lives dear if 
principle was at stake. Their influence re- 
mains to-day. Indeed, the farther removed 
we are from the time in which they lived 
the clearer we see the greatness of the 
causes for which they stood and the more 
inspiring becomes their fidelity. To get the 
proper outline of a mountain and to be awed 
by it one must not stand at its base but far 
away. Thus loom up in their proper pro- 
portions the great lives of the past. Wash- 
ington lives with us to-day. Lincoln speaks 
to every young man. 

" Men's monuments, grown old, forget their names 
They should eternize, but the place where shinmg 

souls have passed imbibes a grace 
Beyond mere earth ; some sweetness of their fames 
Leaves in the soil its unextinguished trace, 
Pungent, pathetic, sad with nobler aims. 
That penetrates our lives and heightens them or 
shames." 
Many will not discern our companions or 
hear their voices calling, but others of 
keener sight and quicker ear will walk with 
the leaders of old, and spend life, as they 



2IO PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

spent it, unselfishly and heroically. These 
will shape our life. It shall be the old 
story over and over again of two putting 
ten thousand to flight. 

There are currents in national life. As 
the spring in the mountain sends forth its 
rivulet which grows as it goes on through 
the plain to the brook, increasing in stature 
to a great river, so the stream of national 
life with each year of its progress gathers in 
volume and power. 

A child's hand could shape its course in 
the beginning. A continent cannot check 
it at last. The current of no country's his- 
tory is so complete and strong toward 
ideal national life as America's. The clear 
rivulet that burst forth at Plymouth Rock 
has gone on gathering to itself other 
streams, purifying those that were muddy, 
until to-day it is the clearest and most re- 
sistless stream in the woild. At first an 
evil-disposed hand might have changed its 
course, to-day the realms of darkness will 
try in vain to turn it and corrupt it. It 
sweeps on and shall sweep onward until it 
becomes pure and reaches with its touch of 
life every desert and waste place of this 
land. It is said that General Grant did not 



AMERICA'S FUTURE ASSURED. 211 

expect that Missionary Ridge would be cap- 
tured at the time it was. He thought it 
would take longer, but when the men had 
once commenced to advance they gathered 
courage and force, and fought on with grow- 
ing hope, and steep hillsides and slippery 
paths and raining death were nothing to 
them. There is the same growing strength 
and courage in the great battle going on in 
this land between the evil forces and the 
good. No enemies, however bitter and de- 
termined, can stand before a nation that for 
two hundred and fifty years has swept on 
in charge after charge for the right and 
looks back upon no final defeat. 

'' The hope of truth grows stronger day by day ; 
I hear the soul of man around me waking, 
And every hour new signs of promise tell 
That the great soul shall once again be free; 
For high and yet more high the murmurs swell 
Of inward strife for truth and liberty." 

3 This country has the assurance of its 
causes. Each battle which it is fighting is 
a just one. Each reform at which it aims 
is a lineal descendent of the reform of all 
ages. Lowell says, ' ' Truth needs no cham- 
pion." Can anyone doubt that the cause 
of human liberty, which has pushed its way 



212 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

forward for nineteen hundred years, which 
has won liberty of soul at the reformation 
and laid the foundations of national indepen- 
dence and established the principle of race 
freedom shall go forward from victory to vic- 
tory? It is the same old truth applied to mod- 
ern conditions. Can anyone believe that the 
kingdom of God which in these ways and 
many others has been extending its sover- 
eignty over our land shall now prove unable 
to cope with its difficulties ? Is that appre- 
ciation of manhood which has been growing 
and strengthening during the life of our 
nation to be lost or deadened? Will the 
profound conviction that our causes are the 
causes of God be weakened or destroyed ? 
No. In one sense truth needs no cham- 
pion. Men die ; causes live. Often the 
moment of evil's seeming triumph is the 
moment of its greatest defeat. Even the 
wrath of man is overruled to the praise of 
God. Righteousness seems to be in the 
hands of its executioner, and tyranny and 
unbelief to be perfectly triumphant, when 
Christ is nailed to the cross. Truth never 
won a greater triumph and error never re- 
ceived such a defeat as then. When Bar- 
row and Penry are thrust into dungeons, 



AMERICA'S FUTURE ASSURED. 213 

liberty seems languishing with them. But 
such things have in them future republics. 
It is in such soil and such shadows that 
liberty takes deeper root. When Lundy 
with his weak personality appeals in vain 
for the slave and Garrison is hunted as an 
enemy of his country their cause seems to 
have no future. But. they are sowers, and 
the storms that rage around them are life to 
the seed which they sow. The harvest 
time is sure to come. America's future is 
assured because her causes are the causes of 
man and of God. The evils of to-day seem 
overwhelming, but the next generation shall 
look back and see clearly that this was seed- 
time, and they shall rejoice because theirs 
is harvest-time. 

* ' Art builds in sand ; the works of pride 
And human passion change and fall ; 
But that which shares the life of God 
With him surviveth all." 

4. Its causes have loyal champions. 
We have already pointed out that the fut- 
ure of any just cause does not depend upon 
the number of its champions but upon their 
fidelity. We have to-day both numbers and 
fidelity. In the beginning of the agitation 
between the colonies and England only a 



214 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

small portion of the colonists appreciated 
the problem. Had the colonists been iimted 
in their appreciation and purpose, they 
would then have been only a handful in 
contrast with the population of the English 
nation. The number who for many years 
carried on the agitation against slavery can 
almost be counted upon the fingers of both 
hands. Numbers, wealth, position, and in- 
fluence were against them. To-day it is 
different. Whittier in his day rejoiced in 
this broader appreciation of the truth: 

'* Thank God that I have lived to see the time 
When the great truth begins at last to find 
An utterance from the deep heart of mankind, 
Earnest and clear, that all revenge is crime. 
And words, to which by GaHlee's lake-shore 
The humble fishers listened with hushed oar, 
Have found an echo in the general heart, 
And of the public faith become a living part." 

Several millions of young people are 
banded together to make more effective their 
work for Christ and the church. This 
work includes the strengthening of their 
country. It is a rule of few exceptions that 
every young person in the young people's 
societies of to-day is given to the destruc- 
tion of this nation's enemies and to the 



AMERICA'S FUTURU ASSURED. 215 

progress of every one of its great interests. 
No mean proportion of the ministry are 
courageously and with the weapons which 
Christ has given them pressing the battle 
against our nation's enemies. The appre- 
ciation of our public schools and other in- 
stitutions is growing rapidly in the hearts 
of the people. The temperance army un- 
doubtedly numbers to-day several millions. 
The ablest and most unselfish teachers that 
can be found are filling the chairs of sociol- 
ogy in our colleges. With love in their 
hearts the missionaries of the cross are 
founding their missions and social settle- 
ments where the ignorance and wickedness 
IS greatest in our cities, and others are sac- 
rificing to take the new west for liberty and 
righteousness. Never in all the world's 
history has there been an army that com- 
pared in numbers to this army. Can we 
doubt the quality of their wisdom, courage, 
and fidelity ? Not if we listen to their ring- 
ing words and notice carefully their spirit 
and deeds. Each year will see their num- 
bers increasing. Each difficulty will in- 
tensify their patriotism. The most vivid 
imagination cannot picture what the future 
has in store of real achievement. It is the 



2l6 



PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 



privilege of each one to have part m the 
St ugS^ and victories of to-day and to be 

encouraged by the vision of the future. 

" I feel the earth move sunward, 
I join the great march onward, 
I take by faith, while livmg, __ 
My freehold of thanksgiving. 
, This country has the assurance of the 
Scriptures. All of the reasons urged m 
ChTpt^rl. might be urged with ^he sanie 
force here. God is the same to-day as yes 
Say His purpose is nearer ^ul Imen 
but not completely carnea o^^" JJf^^^^f. 
step in its progress is to be taken by Amer 
ica and England. As with Israel, ne 
wtshes to bless this nation for its own sake 
7f!!r the enlightenment of other nations. 
^feSvlTentLopendoorofopporUrnity^ 

It is not free from all sin and evil, but it has 
Udl and faithful minority who have 

always been able to claim the P^^'f^"! 
thlword. Thisis the condition which God 
re^rres to be met if a people would suc- 
r He fights for those who fight for 
Tetselves 'I am the Lord that maketh 
aJl Ungs that stretcheth forth the heavens 
tone; th t spreadeth abroad the earth b> 
myself ; that frustrateth the tokens of the 



AAIERICA'S FUTUKli ASSUKKD. 217 

liars, and maketh diviners mad; that turneth 
wise men backward, and maketh their 
knowledge foo:ish; that confirmeth the word 
of his servant, and performeth the counsel 
of his messengers ; that saith to Jerusalem, 
Thou Shalt be inhabited; and to the cities of 
Judah, Ye shall be built, and I will raise up 
the decayed places thereof. ' ' 

God said of Cyrus, and how much more 
true IS It of those who intelligently respond 
to God's will, -I have raised him up in 
righteousness, and I will direct all his ways • 
he shall build my city, and he shall let go 
my captives, not for price nor reward, saith 
the I^ord of hosts. ' ' 

The scriptures teach that every nation has 
its peculiar mission. If it is true to that mis- 
sion its success though long delayed shall 
come. We have seen in our study the 
great mission on which this nation is sent 
I^iberty and the kingdom of God look to it 
for Its next victories. Having in mind the 
number of its citizens that recognize 
Its responsibility and are pledged to its tasks 
we apply the words of Peter, - But ye are a 
chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a 
holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye 
should show forth the praises of him who 



2l8 PROVIDENCR IN AMERICA. 

hath called you out of darkness into his 
marvelous light." So long as America 
gives itself to the carrying out of God's 
purposes so long will the promises given to 
Israel apply to herself. 

The presence of the Bible is a significant 
indication. I need not point out that 
wherever the Bible is studied by the people 
there is a growing intelligence, a quickened 
sense of responsibility, and a new life. 
When Alfred the Great based his laws and 
education upon the ten commandments, 
and when Elizabeth permitted the English 
scriptures to be given to the people, they 
builded better than they knew. To know 
the results read the history of England's 
wonderful progress. The reformation be- 
gan as Wyclif, Savonarola, Huss, lyUther, 
and others pored over the word of God. 
It was the death of heathenism in the Sand- 
wich Islands when the scriptures were given 
to that wild people. If reformations and 
new nations have come from the placing of 
the Bible in the hands of a few, what re- 
sults shall follow the study of the Bible by 
the vast number in our land to-day. Chil- 
dren are taught its truths when they can 
only lisp its words, others are studying the 



AMERICA'S FUTURE ASSURED. 219 

Bible in the Sunday .school, in almost every 
church there are special classes for Bible 
study, magazines and papers with long lists 
of subscribers are scattered broadcast, 
theological seminaries and training-schools 
are sending out determined armies of men 
in whose minds and hearts the word lives, 
and Bible societies are bringing to the door 
of every American home the Bible itself. 
In the springtime a great company of farm- 
ers go out and sow upon the bare earth a 
cloud of seed. A child might, say as he saw 
the bare fields and felt the scorching rays of 
the sun and knew of the destructive power 
of insect and worm, that the fields would 
never be covered with anything except 
weeds, and the vegetation that had already 
grown would soon be destroyed. But the 
farmers keep on sowing. The sun keeps 
shining. The dews and the rain fall. 
Summer comes. Fields are green with 
growing grain. Autumn comes. Barns 
and granaries are crowded. It has taken 
time and hard work, but what of that, the 
farmers are happy. 

This is seed-time in America. Every- 
where men are sowing the seedof the word. 
Some will fall on the stony soil and among 



220 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

the thorns, but others upon good ground, 
and will bring forth some thirty, some sixty, 
and some an hundred fold. It requires 
hard work and patience to wait, but who 
doubts that the harvest will come when he 
realizes that the seed has in it the life of 
Qo(l_the germ of new civilizations. ' ' For 
as the rain cometh down, and the snow from 
heaven, and returneth not thither, but 
watereth the earth, and maketh it sprmg 
forth and bud, that it may give seed to the 
sower, and bread to the eater: so shall 
my word be that goeth forth out of my 
mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but 
it shall accomplish that which I please, and 
it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent 
it Instead of the thorn shall come up the 
fir tree ; and instead of the brier shall come 
up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the 
Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign 
that shall not be cut off . " 

6 It has the presence of Christ. It 
there is any one thing that continually 
meets the student of American history it is 
the fact that this has been a Christian na- 
tion Its foundations were laid by those 
who followed Christ in what then seemed a 
foolish undertaking. Early society was 



AMERICA'S FUTURE ASSURED. 221 

shaped by this spirit and around Christian 
standards. Schools were founded because 
our forefathers believed in Christ's estimate 
of manhood. Our ideals of liberty have 
come from Christian sources. Public senti- 
ment which led to the overthrow of national 
evils was developed by Christian men and 
teachings. Confidence, that led a few col- 
onists to meet a trained army, rested in the 
assurance that its cause was just and was 
the cause of Christ. Teacher and preacher 
and statesman and general and soldier in 
the ranks —the company that has given 
shape to our nation were inspired and em- 
powered by the Christ of God. It is not 
really otherwise to-day. The great body 
of American citizens believe in Christian 
standards and civilization, and those who 
shall give permanent shape to its life are 
the followers of Christ. Our president and 
other officials take their oath of office upon 
the scriptures. There is scarcely a rela- 
tionship in any part of life that does not 
recognize this fact. For many reavSons, not 
permanent, a proportion of our population 
seems indifferent to Christ and the church. 
Already, however, the tide is turning in the 
other direction. Men are beginning to real- 



222 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

ize that Christ is their hope and the church 
the institution which he uses to carry out 
his purposes. The church is coming to 
realize that its work has to do with every 
part of the life of the individual and the 
community. Wherever a church does thus 
realize its mission it is reaching the people 
and shaping the community's life. Such 
movements gather force at each advance. 
A quarter of a century from now the 
churches will have so entered upon their 
all-inclusive work that they will be the 
homes where men love to come, and centers 
out from which shall go the influences that 
work for righteousness. Then will this 
land be Christian not only in its creed, but 
in its life. Christ founded a kingdom which 
has to do not only with men's souls and 
brains, but also with their political, social, 
industrial, moral, and domestic relation- 
ships. The hope of this country is seen in 
the awakening at the present time of the 
followers of Christ to this great responsi- 
bility. Religion will not much longer be 
divorced from practical life. Mere member- 
ship in a church will open man to derision 
unless to his profession of belief he adds a 
life that is spent in its every relationship 



AMERICA'S FUTURE ASSURED. 223 

according to the spirit of Christ. This is 
our confidence. We are workers together 
with God. " There is no uncertainty as to 
the result. The prayers of good men, the 
schools and the teachers, the churches and 
the preachers, the forces that make for 
righteousness, the promises of God for the 
accomplishment of his purposes among men, 
the stars in their courses, will bring forth 
judgment unto truth. There may be op- 
positions, hindrances, and what are to us 
discouraging delays, but He who came to 
bring forth judgment unto truth will not 
fail, nor be discouraged." He who led our 
fathers is leading us. Instead of the fathers 
are the children, not more faithful but with 
the fathers' vision and loyalty and spirit of 
self-sacrifice. 

" But Hfe shall on and upward go ; 
Th' eternal step of progress beats 
To that great anthem, calm and slow, 
Which God repeats. 

" God works in all things ; all obey 
His first pi'opulsion from the night. 
Wake thou and watch — the world is gray 
With morning light ! " 



God of our fathers, known of old, 
Lord of our far flung battle-line, 

Beneath whose awful hands we hold 
Dominion over palm and pine — 

Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, 

Lest we forget — lest we forge'. ! 

The tumult and the shouting dies. 
The captains and the kings depart ; 

Still stands thine ancient sacrifice. 
An humble and a contrite heart. 

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 

Lest we forget — lest we forget. 

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose 
Wild tongues that have not thee in awe, 

Such boasting as the Gentiles use. 
Or lesser breeds without the law — 

Lord God of hosts, be with us yet. 

Lest we forget — lest we forget. 

For heathen heart that puts her trust 
In reeking tube and iron shard — 

All valiant dust that builds on du::,t, 

And, guarding, calls not thee to guard— 

For frantic boast and foolish word, 

Thy mercy on the people, Lord. 

—Riidyard Kiplhig. 



XIII. 

the english-speaking nations and the 
world's future. 

The student of America's history and 
problems traveling in Great Britain finds 
his convictions deepening that the two 
countries have a common cause. If he 
visits the haunts of Alfred the Great he 
finds there the beginnings of the political 
and intellectual life of America as well as of 
England. As he gazes reverently upon the 
fire-scared charter he realizes that it is his 
charter of rights. There is hardly a step 
taken that does not press home the fact that 
the two English-speaking nations have a 
common inheritance, common foes, and a 
common destiny. 

They have the same language. It is the 
universal tongue. The traveler to-day finds 
it the language of communication. Ten 
men from as many nations find it the only 
language that all can use and understand. 
The common means of communication in 
business will eventually be this language. 
This gives to England and America a great 
common responsibility. Their ideas and 



ENGIvISH-SPKAKINCi NATIONS. 227 

principles will reach all nations in time. 
They have a common literary inheritance. 
Shakespeare, Milton, and Tennyson, Long- 
fellow, lyowell, and Whittier, belong to us 
all. John Hampden and Wendell Phillips 
appeal to the English-speaking world. And 
this literature is marked by the moral pur- 
pose that gave it birth. Upon the expe- 
rience of the past it stands and speaks as a 
prophet to the present. It calls to a large 
future. It is a messenger of liberty and 
righteousness. It is an indestructible tie 
binding the two countries together in mem- 
ory, in responsibility, and in anticipation. 
It is one of God's ways of spanning the 
Atlantic. 

Some of the qualities ascribed to Amer- 
ica's leaders belong to the race. The 
Anglo-Saxon is noted for his energy and 
daring. He is the great explorer of mod- 
ern times. He pushes his way from busi- 
ness and other motives into all new lands. 
He possesses what some one has named 
'* practical judgment " that makes his un- 
dertakings successful. He now controls 
over one-third of the territory and over one- 
quarter of the population of the world. In 
1700 the English-speaking peoples num- 



■228 PROVIDKNCE IN AMERICA. 

bered about 6,000,000. In 1S97 they will 
outreach 130,000,000. What the future 
will be no one can say. 

England and America hold to the same 
ideas and principles of liberty. There are 
differences in political ideas but we are to 
mention only those that are alike. They 
have had an overmastering passion for free- 
dom. Prisons and battle-fields in Britain 
unite with prisons and battlefields in Amer- 
ica in testimony of the Anglo-Saxon's love 
for liberty. Amidst all the false ideas that 
led to slavery and sometimes to persecution 
this free spirit has been present that led at 
last to intelligence and freedom. To-day 
the great mass of Britain's population hold 
with America that the authority of govern- 
ment rests finally in the will of the people, 
and not in the power of the king, and that 
each citizen should have his part in deter- 
mining what the will of the people is. 

There is, too, 3 community of religious 
ideas and principles. Both countries are 
Protestant. As pointed out elsewhere. 
Protestantism is based upon three principles 
— living faith in Christ, the authority of the 
Scriptures as a rule of faith and practice, 
and a community of believers of which 



KNGI^ISH-SPKAKING NATIONS. 229 

Christ is the individual head, and of which 
all the members are priests unto God. 
These principles must be the foundation 
of all true civilization. I^iberty commences 
to build here. General intelligence finds its 
beginnings in the personal responsibility 
upon which these principles insist. It is no 
accident that the English-speaking race has 
loved and stood for liberty. Their religious 
ideas have been the leading influence in tak- 
ing from the English crown its former pow- 
ers and giving them back to the people, and 
in founding a free nation and freeing a race 
of slaves in America. Judged from the 
point of view of the hopes of the world, no 
stronger ties could bind two peoples to- 
gether. 

Here we meet another common responsi- 
bility. It is not simply a question of Eng- 
land and America and the interests of their 
milHons, it is a world problem. Is reli- 
gious liberty to be at last the inheritance of 
every man and nation ? Is the almost ab- 
solute power of czar and emperor to be 
vested in the people, where God expected it 
to be? Is a living faith in Christ finally to 
lead the world ? Is the priesthood of the 
believer to be appreciated by every be- 



23O PROVIDKNCK IN AMERICA* 

liever? In a word, will the kingdom of 
God ever fill the earth with its spirit and its 
power? If so it will be because the princi- 
ples, religious and political, and the type of 
Christianity of England and America 
have come to control it. This responsibility 
should thrill every patriotic and Christian 
Briton and American. He should measure 
his country and his part in its responsibili- 
ties and sacrifices by the world's needs. It 
is true in a peculiar sense of the Christian 
Anglo-Saxon that his " field is the world." 

But there are common foes which must be 
met and overthrown if this mission is to be 
fulfilled. With these great opportunities 
come, as always, great dangers. 

I. The danger of war. War between 
Britain and America would set back the 
causes of humanity for centuries. I know^ 
of no other calamity so destructive to the 
hopes of the world as this would be. When 
news of the Venezuelan complications was 
telegraphed abroad, strong men on both 
sides of the Atlantic wept at the thought of 
what might come. The non-conformist 
pulpits of Britain and the evangelical pul- 
pits of the United States rang out a united 
protest against the suggestion of war that 



ENGUSH-SPEAKING NATIONS. 23I 

aroused the great body of citizens of both 
nations to appreciate what is at stake. 
This false spirit of strife is apt to be stirred 
up in America by politicians and cheap 
party papers on the eve of an election. In 
Britain it appears in a lack of appreciation 
of our spirit and institutions which tests the 
patience of Americans who have not traveled 
on the island and found the cordial feeling 
of the English people for " the people of the 
states." The way of procedure is plain. 
Let the pulpit and press of both countries 
urge the common, world-wide responsibili- 
ties of the English-speaking peoples. Let 
the work of instruction go on until both na- 
tions shall appreciate this responsibility and 
be willing to bear and forbear. Let public 
sentiment be such that officials will not dare 
to enter upon a selfish policy or hastily talk 
of war when complications arise. The pul- 
pit and press have the power to bring about 
an invincible public opinion for peace. 

In addition to this all disputes must be 
settled by arbitration. Let the leaders of 
this land and their great constituency join 
with Dr. Berry and his constituency in in- 
sisting that an international board shall be 
established which shall have the settlement 



232 PROVIDENCE IN AMERICA. 

of all questions between the two countries. 
Let the agitation go on until political self- 
ishness shall give w^ay and better judgment 
shall prevail. The time is past for nations 
of the same blood, language, literature, of 
many common political and religious ideas, 
and who share a responsibility to the world, 
to shoot each others' citizens and to destro}^ 
each others' property. 

2. The danger of sacerdotalism. The 
church in its beginning had no official priest- 
hood. It was a family, a society of free 
citizens, and, from its relation to God, a 
kingdom. Dr. Fairbairn, in "The Place of 
Christ in Modern Theology," puts it clearly: 
" Its founder never called himself a priest ; 
stood in radical antagonism to the priesthood 
of his land and time ; the writer who ap- 
plies to him the name of high-priest careful- 
ly avoids this or any similar name to any 
class of his people, and those who describe 
his work as a sacrifice never attach any 
similar idea to any acts of any officials or 
their instruments of worship. The religion 
of Christ stood among the ancient faiths as 
a strange and extraordinary thing — a priest- 
less religion, without the symbols, sacri- 
fices, ceremonies, officials hitherto, save by 



KNGUSH-SPEAKIXG NATIONS. 233 

prophetic Hebraism held to be rehgious all 
in all. ' ' Each believer is a priest unto God 
in no official sense but in a spiritual rela- 
tionship. Sacerdotalism is against Christ's 
teachings and order. If it be true, then the 
salvation of a soul is not found alone in 
Christ, but must have the aid of a middle- 
man before it is effective. It is in its last 
analysis the substitution of the priest for 
Christ, of works for faith, and is destructive 
and dangerous. 

This is seen in the history of the church. 
It led to the formality and tyranny and cor- 
ruption of the church that marked the cen- 
turies from the fourth to the time of the 
Reformation. It has blossomed forth into 
scaffold, prison, rack, and stake. Its legiti- 
mate fruit is the fiat that the interpretation 
of the scriptures and the definition of re- 
ligious duties rests in the power of the few. 
If universally prevalent to-day it would 
sweep Protestant countries back to the 
physical, mental, and moral servitude pre- 
ceding the Reformation. To-day it is lead- 
ing a part of the church in England and 
America into ritualism and formalism and 
on toward essential Romanism. If sacer- 
dotalism is true, then Romanism is true and 



234 PROVIDENCK IN AMERICA. 

Protestantism is wrong, and liberty a 
wicked delusion. It is the duty of those 
who believe in the great principles of Prot- 
estantism and the teachings of the scrip- 
tures, who rejoice in the civil and religious 
liberty of this age and race, to do their ut- 
most to check the growth of this dangerous 
error. The young people in the non-priest- 
ly churches should be carefully instructed 
in the teachings of the Scriptures and of 
history. In the spirit of love and charity, 
but clearly and strongly, should the pulpit, 
press, and ho^ne declare the great principles 
upon which our institutions and civilization 
rest. In England the non-conformist 
churches have united in a federation. Their 
leaders begin to appreciate this menace and 
are getting their forces in line to oppose it- 
They will thus hasten the time when church 
and state will be separate, and this will bear 
piecious fruit for the religious life of the 
nation. In America there should be that 
comit}^ between the churches of this com- 
mon cause that shall avoid all rivalry and 
waste of time and means, and shall make 
most effective the efforts to extend a pure 
faith and simple methods of worship. 

3. The substitution of policy for prin- 



ENGIvISH-SPEAKING NATIONS. 235 

•ciple in international affairs. The world 
has seen the sad spectacle of slaughter in 
Armenia, and England, silent from fear of 
war, when her voice of protest should have 
thrilled the world and terrified the Turk. 
It has seen the war of extermination in 
Cuba, and America as yet trifling with its 
duty to humanity. ^ It has seen the South 
African episode, and the House of Com- 
mons whitewashing the prime movers in 
the disgraceful affair. If this indicates a 
new standard of national conduct, the citi- 
zens of either land may well be anxious for 
its future. To substitute policy for princi- 
ple in national life will be as healthful as to 
substitute in man water for blood. Amer- 
ica and England have been fed upon differ- 
ent meat than political offal. They have 
grown strong among nations because 
they have shaped their policies by their un- 
derstanding of the will of God and the needs 
of humanity. Let every patriot's voice be 
lifted, as Gladstone lifted his for Armenia, 
for an international conduct of justice and 
mercy. Let it be taught, though men 
sneer or smile in pity, that a nation must 

I. While this is in press we are having in the difficulties 
with Spain, a thrilline illustration of the power of self 
government and the unselfish love for humanity of the 
American people 



236 PROVIDENCE IN AM ERICA, 

shape its policy by the sermon on the 
mount and the golden rule, if it would live 
and fulfil its mission to the world. Those 
just taking up the duties and privileges of 
citizenship have this responsibility to meet, 
and will, I am confident, see this ideal in a 
measure realized. 

4. The danger of sabbath desecration. 
The contents of "The Sabbath for Man," 
by Dr. Crafts, should be familiar to every 
Anglo-Saxon. The sabbath as a day of 
worship and rest is one of the bulwarks of 
true civilization. I can only hint at the re- 
sults that would come from its general des- 
ecration. 

The religious life of England and Amer- 
ica would be destroyed. Lyman Beecher 
saw the danger and gave vigorous warning: 
* ' The crisis has come. By the people of 
this generation, by ourselves probably, the 
amazing question is to be decided whether 
the inheritance of our fathers shall be pre- 
served 01 thrown away ; whether our sab- 
baths shall be a delight or a loathing ; 
whether the taverns on that day shall be 
crowded with drunkards, or the sanctuary 
of God with humble worshipers." With- 
out the influence of a worship day- — a time 



ENGI<ISH-SPKAKING NATIONS. 237 

distinctly set apart as a day of spiritual cult- 
ure — the next generation would grow up 
without faith. To have one day in which 
business is laid aside and which reminds 
men that there is a Lord in heaven who is 
concerned with the earth is in itself a min- 
istry to the religious life of a nation. 

Such desecration would mean the destruc- 
tion of the moral and civil advantages of the 
English-speaking nations. Their estimate 
of the value of man would narrow down. 
The manufacturers would soon run seven 
days instead of six. The industrial classes 
would sink into a slavery more abject and 
permanent than the black man ever suf- 
fered. Liberty would die. The home 
would disintegrate. The moral nature 
would be deadened. The moral wor 
would realize what Byron's dream of 
"Darkness" saw in the physical world. 
" I am no fanatic, I hope," says Joseph 
Cook, "as to Sunday; but I look abroad 
over the map of popular freedom in the 
world and it does not seem to me accidental 
that Switzerland, Scotland, England, and 
the United States, the countries which best 
observe Sunday, constitute almost the whole 
map of safe popular government." 



238 PROVIDENCE IN AMERIC^l, 

The destruction of the sabbath would 
mean the destruction of the intellectual 
strength of the English-speaking peoples. 
They have been known for their thought- 
fulness. Many trains of thought have been 
started in the quiet of the Lord's day, with 
its meditation, its time for Bible study and 
prayer, that have led to reformations, re- 
ligious and civil. Dr. MacGregor recently 
said with great force from his pulpit in Edin- 
burg: " The keeping of your sabbath makes 
the difference between a frivolous and a 
thoughtful, reflective people. People of 
Scotland, keep your sabbath. English- 
speaking people everywhere, keep your sab- 
bath." Popular government depends upon 
general intelligence. No people can be 
thoughtful and spend each day of the week 
in the exhausting work and cares of busi- 
ness and social life. 

The destruction of the sabbath would 
bring physical degeneration to the nations. 
Machinery requires rest. The beast of bur- 
den can accomplish more in six days than 
in seven. A man is more highly organized 
than a mule. If he has no rest he draws 
upon his resources during the day more 
than he adds to them at night. It means a 



ENGI.ISH-SPEAKING NATIONS. 239 

weakened body for himself and his off- 
spring. It means national deterioration. 

I have in few words outlined the common 
ties and responsibilities of Britain and 
America and some of the influences that are 
destructive to their type of civilization. 
Much must be left unsaid. I believe that 
humanity faces the east. The victories of 
the past are prophetic. I am sure that 
Christ is marching on, conquering and to 
conquer. With the ear close to the earth 
one can hear an approaching host. Even 
my dull ear, close to the living world, can 
hear the mighty forward strides of human- 
ity, lyiberty and righteousness desire 
* ' new worlds to conquer. ' ' Men are be- 
ginning to appreciate the greatness of this 
age. If, appreciating this, we do our part, 
the kingdom of God shall hasten in its com- 
ing, and our children's children shall say: 

" Then the time when men were truly men: 
Though wars grew less, their spirits met the test 
Of new conditions ; conquering civic wrong ; 
Saving the state anew by virtuous Uves ; 
Guarding their country's honor as their own, 
And their own as their country's and their sons'; 
Defying leagued fraud with single truth ; 
Not fearing loss ; and daring to be pure. 
And as the martyrs of the ancient world 
Gave death for man, so nobly gave they life ; 
Those the great days, and that the heroic age.'* 



INDEX. 



Acquirement of Territory 

Adams, Mrs. John 

Adams, Samuel .... 94, 

Aim of this book . 

Alfred the Great . 

American Missionary Association 

America's future . 

Arable land .... 

Area of U. S., etc . 

Armenia .... 

Anglo-Saxon 

Character and principles . . 59 

Territory and population 

IvOve of liberty 
Articles of Confederation, Failure of 



Bacon, Francis 

Bacon, Leonard 

Bancroft 

Barrow .... 

Beecher, Henry Ward . 

Beecher, Lyman 

Benedicts, Popes . 

Berry, Dr. 

Bible and America's future 

Boston Port Bill . 

Bradford, Rev. A. H. . 

Brewster, Elder 

Brotherhood and a Republic 

Bryce 55, io5, 



50 

94 

107-108 

• 23-24 
118, 226 

. 84 
204 

• 48 
44 

. 235 

-66, 227 

227 

228 

96 

36 

57 

36,89 

212 

100, III 

236 

30 
231 
216-219 
92, 93 
164 
114 
155-158 
140, 142, 149 



28 



Cabot 


• 36 


Carey, William 


28 


Causes of America .... 


211 


Christ and America's Future 


220-223 


Church and America's Future 


161-188 


Climate 


51 


Clubs 


. 196 


Columbus 


66 


Congregationalists 


. 36 


Copernicus 


. 36 


Corruption of the Tenth Century . 


• 29-31 


Coxe, Arthur Cleveland 


• T17 


Critical Periods .... 


• 87 


Cuyler, Dr. Theodore L. 


lOI 


Cities, Corruption in . . . 


120-123 


Crafts, Dr. W. F 


. 236 


Cyrus 


. 217 



Declaration of Independence 


. 96 


De Tocqueville 


143 


Discovery of America, Providence in . 


27-37 


Condition of the Old World 


29-33 


General movement toward exploration 


^ 33-35 


The gift of invention . 


35-36 


Special Providences . 


36-37 


Democracy 


138 


Development of America— Providence in 


• 73-84 


Material 


74-76 


Education 


76-77 


Moral 


78-81 


Religious 


81-83 


Special Providences . 


83-84 


Divorces 


128 



Elizabeth, Queen . 
Emancipation Proclamation 
Emerson 

English-speaking Nations 
Evening Service 



. 218 

100, 181 

26 

226-239 
179-182 



Pairbairn, Dr. A. M. 

Faith . . . . 

Franklin 

Fiske, John . 

French and Indian wars 



Gadsden 

Gage, General 

Garrison 

Giddings, Joshua R. 

Gladden, Washington, Dr. 

Gladstone 

Goodrich 

Grant, U. S. . 



Hamilton 

Hancock 

Hemans Felicia 

Henry, Patrick 

Holland, J. G. 

Home and America's Future 

Howe, Julia Ward . 

Huss 



81. 



lOI 


■102, 112 


-115 




• 94, 98 


59. 84, 89, 92 


',96 






93 






94 




95, 


198 




100, no. 


213 
99 




• 164, 


170 




• 73, 97, 


235 
55 




102, 


210 




• 98, 


107 

no 

39 




94. 


J06 
104 




191 


201 
160 
218 



Immorality in our Colleges . . . .129 
Industry and the Home . . . .194 

Intelligence and RepresentativeGovernment 145-15 



Intemperance — 

Financial effects . 
Moral results 
Political influence 

Invention and Progress 

Isabella, Queen 



130-131 
. 132 
132-13S 
35 
. . 3^ 



Jefferson 



99 



Kent, William 


122 


Kipling, Rudyard ...•"• 


225 


Lakes and Civilization . . • • • 


54 


Law and Democracy . . • • • 


139 


Leaders, America's . . • • ^ 


05-115 


Number of leaders . • • i 


05-106 


Time of their appearance . . i 


06-107 


Character of leaders . . • i 


07-115 


Lecky ^^ 


>2, 129 


Lincoln ^°7, i 


[3, 206 


Literature, Vicious 


130 

86 


Longfellow 


Lowell 


211 


Lundy 


213 


Luther ^ 


37, 218 


MacGregor, Dr 


238 

87, 88 


Mayflower Covenant 


Mill, John Stuart 


150 


Missions, modern 


207 


Moody, D wight L 


163 


Moral Development of a Nation . 


[50-155 


Morris, Robert 


109 


Mountains and civilization . 


52 



Oberlin .... 
Organization of a Church 
Otis, James 



. 84 

183-186 

90, 92 



Paul 

Payne, John Howard 

Peace, Necessity between Britain and 

America 
Penry ..... 
Philhps Wendell . 
Physical Features — Providence in 

Area and position 

Resources of soil and mines 

Acquirement of territory 

Climate and character 

Mountains, rivers and lakes 

Pitt 

Policy 

Preface 

Present Perils — 

Class and sectional spirit 

Dull national conscience 

Religious indifference . 

Decay of family life 

Social immorality 

Intemperance 

Providence in 
Protestantism 



Reformation . 

Renaissance . 

Revolution — Providence in 

Rivers and Civilization , 

Romanism 

Rhodes on Moral Standards 



109, 



27 
190 

230 
212 
III 

40-55 
40-45 

45-50 
50 
51-52 
52-55 
91 
234-236 

7 

118-119 
120-125 
125-126 
126-129 
129-130 
130-133 
133-133 
62-65, 228 

. 2S. 



32 

93-95 
53 
30, 64, 67, 233 

122 



Sabbath . 

Sacerdotalism 

Saloon, Licensing of 

Savonarola 

Schaff, Dr. 

Schurman, President J. G. 

Scriptures and National Life 

Providence assured 

Purpose of such care 

Conditions to be met 
Settlement of America, Providence in 

Races settling America 

Types of ci\ilization 
Smith, Rev. Francis 
Spurgeon 

Storrs, Dr. R. S. . 
Strong, Dr. Josiah . 
Sumner, Charles . 



46, 



236-239 
232-234 

125 
218 

64 
115 

7-24 

7-^3 

14-17 

18-23 

58-70 

58-67 

67-69 

137 

175 

31 

48, 64. 66 
99 



Tea party 
Testament, New 
Tobacco . 



92 
>3 

195 



United States— Extent of 
Isolated 
Resources 
Arable land . 
Mountain systems 



40 
42-45 

45 
48-49 

52 



Wade, Ben 
Washington 
Watts, Isaac 



99 



93, 96, 97, 98, 99, 106, III, 113, 214 



Whittier . 
Wesley, John . 
Writ of Assistance 
Wvclif . 



Young Men and the Church 
Young People and America's Future 



', 72, 


203 


28, 


207 




90 




218 




T65 




214 



OCT 40 1898 



